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ornamental line

Art and Artifice in Ireland

"She tried to weigh each side of the question."
James Joyce's "Araby" (1904; 1914)

 

Points for Reflection

W. B. Yeats's "The Stolen Child" (1886, 1889)

  1. what poetic strategies does Yeats employ to create a mesmerizing effect in “The Stolen Child”?
  2. is it clear to the reader whether it would be better for the child to stay or go?
  3. to what extent do the faeries appear concerned with the child's welfare?


W. B. Yeats's "Adam's Curse" (Nov. 1902; 1902, 1903)

  1. what is the prevailing tone of "Adam's Curse"? Does it change?
  2. look up Genesis, chapter three. To what event does the title of "Adam's Curse" refer, and how does the poem expand its applicability beyond the original context?
  3. do you accept the narrator's claim that the literary arts take more effort than manual labor?
  4. does the narrator celebrate the citation of great literature as an effective way to pursue one's beloved?
  5. do lines 4-14 constitute the kind of "high courtesy" which the narrator implicitly critiques, or an alternative mode of woooing?
  6. what do Yeats's poems suggest about the nature of beauty, about both its uses and abuses?


W. B. Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium" (1926; 1927, 1928)

  1. does "Sailing to Byzantium" constitute a celebration of aging, or a requiem for the elderly?
  2. consider the tensions in this poem, those between action and reflection, youth and the elderly, Nature and artifice, the present and eternity.
  3. we looked at how "The Stolen Child" equivocates, suggesting both potential gains and potential losses associated with the child's forced removal from his home. "Sailing to Byzantium" suggests another relocation, this time for an elderly man. Does this particular trip carry the narrator to an equally enigmatic site, or can we safely assume that Byzantium is a positive, heaven-like refuge?


James Joyce's "Eveline" (1904) in Dubliners (1914)

  1. what various ways might the reader interpret the line “few people passed” in the opening?
  2. which pulls on Eveline more powerfully, the past or future?
  3. why might the narrator refrain from usings Eveline’s name right at the story's openin,, waiting a couple pages to name her?
  4. are we encouraged to trust Eveline’s sailor boyfriend, Frank, and to be as excited as she about the couple’s intended destination (Buenos Ayres)? Do Eveline's thoughts about him betray anything a modern reader might find suspicious?
  5. to what purpose does Joyce put disabilities in this story? Why might Joyce introduce the image of a crippled boy in the opening, and a dying, raving woman in the close?
  6. does Eveline’s prayer suggest she is open to God's leading, whatever that may be?
  7. does Eveline make a prudent decision at the close of her story?
  8. what does Eveline fear, and what desire? Which has the more powerful influence on her emotions? Which does she heed more, ultimately?
  9. "Derevaun Seraun" supposedly means, in the Irish vernacular, "the end of pleasure is pain" (Henke 63). Why place these particular words in the mouth of Eveline's mentally ill and dying mother?


James Joyce's "Araby” (1905) in Dubliners (1914)

  1. how does Joyce go about providing an oblique commentary on early twentieth-century Dublin through his careful description of the story's setting?
  2. does the young protagonist of this tale appear comfortable in his environment?
  3. does the adult narrator of "Araby" limit himself to diction and concepts accessible to a young boy when describing his younger self's first love?
  4. does the young narrator's attraction to the girl next door contain a sexual component?
  5. why is the boy thankful that he can see so little through the back drawing-room window on a dark and rainy evening?
  6. at what point does sordid reality begin to impinge on the dream world through which our young protagonist is floating?
  7. how many different types of adversaries does the narrator encounter in his romantic quest to win a treasure for Mangan’s unnamed sister?
  8. at what moment does the young boy's fantasy utterly shatter, and why? What does the young protagonist painfully discover about himself? About society?
  9. what role does darkness play in the opening of the short story, and how has its function altered by the conclusion?
  10. why does the boy accuse himself of vanity in the close?


an abstract dark and somber painting of a solitary figure standing on a beach with the light from a lighhouse streaking diagonally across the top right
The Sea and the Lighthouse (1947)
Jack B. Yeats


Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu