"The Folly of Being Comforted" (1902/03)
1. How many perspectives are given voice in this poem and what effect
does this multiple perspective create?
2. How would you paraphrase the mysterious line 8?
3. How does this "well-belovèd" differ from John Keats's
Madeline
in "The Eve of St. Agnes" or Coventry Patmore's "Angel" (Honoria)?
"The Wild Swans at Coole" (1917)
4. When we studied Romanticism, we saw how poets could use nature to
represent responses of the human mind to experience (for instance,
Wordsworth's
mapping of memory in "Tintern Abbey," or Shelley's representation of
sublime
experience in the "Ode to the West Wind."
How does Yeats use natural imagery here? Is this just another Nature
Poem?
"Easter 1916"
5. What does section 1 suggest to you about social relations between
the lyric speaker and the average middle-class Irish citizen before
Easter
1916?
6. What kinds of political effect are achieved by the poet's
descriptions
of "That woman," "This man" and so on, in the poem's second section?
7. What do you make of Yeats's image of "Hearts ... / Enchanted to
a stone" in section 3? Usually a heart turned to stone is an image of
desensitization,
but is that the case here?
8. This poem suggests that poetry can have political effects other
than "agitprop" (the discourse of agitation and propaganda). What do
you
think?
The Dissolution of Empire and Patriarchy
James Joyce: "The Dead" (1914)
1. It is a strategy common in both imperial and gender politics for
some social groups to dominate others by infantilizing or patronizing
them.
Look carefully at Gabriel Conroy's treatment of his wife Gretta, his
Aunts
Julia and Kate, and Lily, the caretaker's daughter, and list examples
where
you think he might, even unconsciously, be using such a strategy.
2. What do you make of Molly Ivors's responses to Gabriel? Try to extend your interpretation beyond a reading of personal likes and dislikes.
3. Michael Furey embodies a manliness and male sexuality quite different from Gabriel Conroy's. How does "The Lass of Aughrim" serve to crystallize this difference?
4. Study the description of the snow with which the story ends. Do you think this is just a fine description of weather in a Realist tradition, or is there anything in the author's style that invites us to read the snow as a figure of speech suggestive of something beyond its own literal presence?