1. Language and identity: Yeats and Synge

2. Yeats, Cathleen ni Houlihan Written with Lady Gregory 1902 1904, Abbey Theatre – opening performance Maud Gonne

3. Historical references 1798, Kilalla Irish rebellion helped by French troupes British victory

4. Historical references Brian and Clontarf: Battle of Clontaf (1014), between Brian Boru and the King of Leinster O’Donnells: leaders of the ancient Tryconnell (Donegal) O’Sullivans: ref. to people living in County Tipperary

5. Mythological references Cathleen ni Houlihan (queen or old woman) Four green fields

6. John Millington Synge Fluent in Gaelic >> the language in his dramas. Aran Islands (Yeats) He wrote six plays, usually traditional, three-act- dramas. Most famous: The Playboy of the Western World. Tragic and comic.

7. Riders to the Sea (1904) Place and time Plot Characters

8. Riders to the Sea Symbols and foretelling motives - Michael - the sea - boards and rope - forgetting bread and blessing - „the fearfulest thing” – the grey pony with Michael on its back Fatalism

9. Identity Irish people in the country Tales, legends, (Historical drama) Language

10. Language and identity Wicklow, Kerry and Galway dialects Gaelic elements - Gaelic words - English elements with modified meaning - Idiomatic phrases - Typicalities of the folk-languages - Greetings, oaths, etc.

11. “Reprisals” Some nineteen German planes, they say, You had brought down before you died. We called it a good death. Today Can ghost or man be satisfied? Although your last exciting year Outweighed all other years, you said, Though battle joy may be so dear A memory, even to the dead, It chases other thought away, Yet rise from your Italian tomb, Flit to Kiltartan cross and stay Till certain second thoughts have come Upon the cause you served, that we Imagined such a fine affair:

12. “Reprisals” Half-drunk or whole-mad soldiery Are murdering your tenants there. Men that revere your father yet Are shot at on the open plain. Where may new-married women sit And suckle children now? Armed men May murder them in passing by Nor law nor parliament take heed. Then close your ears with dust and lie Among the other cheated dead.

13. “Reprisals” Written in memory of Major Robert Gregory Very direct (rare in Yeats) Real events Not a death elegy, but Anger and indignation of the speaker Reprisals: those of the British against the Irish nationalists (esp. Sinn Fein) Black and Tans – attacks against the civilians

14. “Reprisals” Gregory: clichés familiar from Yeats’s earlier poems Cruel reality (vs. Yeats’s hero cult and theory about indifference)