ENGL 106, Spring, 2013, Dr. Harnett
Week 12 Class Notes, page 1
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Announcements:
 Exam on Unit 2 are slowly being graded!
 SI meets today 12:20-1:30 in SR 324.
 News on Our Clark Library visit: I just heard back from the staff member
who is preparing for our visit on Friday, May 24, 11:00 AM. She is
selecting some rare first editions by Tennyson, Keats, and some other
poets we’ve read. The main attractions will be David Copperfield and
especially some works by Wilde.
 Keep working on the DC Essay. By now, you should have some ideas and
examples of your own from the novel, and you should have read the article
and selected examples from it. Develop your thesis


William Butler Yeats biographical information at
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1923/yeatsbio.html and
http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/poets/bio/yeats_w.htm .
Poems:
William Butler Yeats. “When You Are Old”
http://theotherpages.org/poems/yeats01.html ;
“No Second Troy” http://theotherpages.org/poems/yeats01.html ;
“Easter, 1916” http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/779/
For each poem that we address, provide supporting quotations and cite by author
and line numbers as we analyze them in terms of the following aspects.
Meanings you interpret, literal and figurative
Expression, including word choices, sounds, imagery (similes,
metaphors, symbols, personification, etc.)
Effects on readers: memories and feelings evoked, thoughts
inspired, etc.
o “When You Are Old” http://theotherpages.org/poems/yeats01.html
o “No Second Troy”
http://theotherpages.org/poems/yeats01.html;
WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
ENGL 106, Spring, 2013, Dr. Harnett
Week 12 Class Notes, page 2
Who is the “she” referred to in the poem? What clues tell
you this and not someone else?
 Explain the meaning and significance of the title.
o “Easter, 1916” http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/779/
 meanings
 expression
 impressions
Ideas and Advice about The DC Paper:
 Thesis—an insight about the topic. For example, what do
you argue about the function of humor in David Copperfield?
What does the collection and diversity of names and nicknames
about David mean or imply about identity? Note that identity
applies both to David and human nature in a general sense.
 Support and Development: Points and support.
o Derive and state points to build your explanation of your
thesis in a logical order, usually moving from general to
specific, though there are many options. You might decide
to develop your examples in the order of their relevance to
your thesis or some kind of priority, not blindly in the
order that they occur in the reading.
o Select examples carefully to support and demonstrate
each point. Set up the examples as quotes (for specific and
in depth examples) or as paraphrases or summaries (for
quick documentation). Integrate quotations by using
signal phrases, or by making a statement in a sentence
followed by a colon and the quote. Cite all references to
the novel and article, not just quotes.
o Account for causes and effects, background and resulting
events, etc., to provide the clearest explanation of each
point and your thesis.
o Decide whether to incorporate ideas and examples from
the article within each point supporting your thesis,
combined with examples from the novel, or in its own
separate section, and if the latter, whether that section
should be placed before or after the analysis of the novel’s
examples.
For Next Time:
 Work on the David Copperfield Essay. The final revision of it is due
Thursday, May 16. See me for feedback and advice before then so that
you can revise it effectively.
 Read more Yeats:
o “The Second Coming” http://theotherpages.org/poems/yeats01.html
o “Sailing to Byzantium” http://www.online-literature.com/frost/781/
o “Lapis Lazuli” http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/777/

ENGL 106, Spring, 2013, Dr. Harnett
Week 12 Class Notes, page 3
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Announcements: DC Paper is due today. See me if there are any
problems.
Yeats In Class Assignment: Hand in your work when it is complete
William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html
1. Interpret these phrases and express them in your own words:
a. “turning and turning in the widening gyre”
b. “the blood-dimmed tide is loosed”
c. “Spiritus Mundi”
d. “a shape with a lion body and the head of a man”
e. “twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle”
f. “and what rough beast, its hour come at last,
slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”
2. Write a brief paragraph that uses at least 2 of these phrases to explain
the poem’s overall theme or message as you interpret it.
Note Yeats’ frequent allusions and adaptations of ideas from other
others and events.
Explanations of historical context and some terms used in the poem
(from Wikipedia): "The Second Coming" is a poem composed by Irish poet
William Butler Yeats in 1919 and first printed in The Dial (November 1920) and
afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses titled Michael Robartes and
the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and
second coming as allegory to describe the atmosphere in post-war Europe.[1]
The poem is considered a major work of Modernist poetry and has been
reprinted in several collections including The Norton Anthology of Modernist
Poetry.[2]
History
The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War.[3] While
the various manuscript revisions of the poem refer to the Renaissance, French
Revolutions, the Irish rebellion, and those of Germany and of Russia, Richard
Ellman and Harold Bloom suggest the text refers to the Russian Revolution of
1917. Bloom argues that Yeats takes the side of the counter-revolutionaries and
the poem suggests that reaction to the revolution would come too late.[4] Early
drafts also included such lines as: "And there's no Burke to cry aloud no Pitt,"
and "The good are wavering, while the worst prevail.".[5]
[edit]
Origins of terms
The word gyre in the poem's first line may be used in a sense drawn from Yeats's
book A Vision, which sets out a theory of history and metaphysics which Yeats
claimed to have received from spirits. The theory of history articulated in A Vision
centres on a diagram composed of two conic helixes ("gyres"), overlapping
ENGL 106, Spring, 2013, Dr. Harnett
Week 12 Class Notes, page 4
eachother, so that the widest part of one cone occupies the same plane as the tip
of the other cone, and vice versa. Yeats claimed that this image captured
contrary motions inherent within the process of history, and he divided each gyre
into different regions that represented particular kinds of historical periods (and
could also represent the psychological phases of an individual's development).[6]
Yeats believed that in 1921 the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic
moment, as history reached the end of the outer gyre and began moving along
the inner gyre.
The lines "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate
intensity" can be read as a paraphrase of one of the most famous passages from
Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, a book which Yeats, by his own
admission, regarded from his childhood with religious awe:
The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.
The wise want love, and those who love want wisdom;
And all best things are thus confused to ill.
In the early drafts of the poem, Yeats used the phrase "the Second Birth", but
substituted the phrase "Second Coming" while revising[citation needed]. The
Second Coming of Christ referred to in the Biblical Book of Revelation is here
described as an approaching dark force with a ghastly and dangerous purpose.
Though Yeats's description has nothing in common with the typically envisioned
Christian concept of the Second Coming of Christ, as his description of the figure
in the poem is nothing at all like the image of Christ, it fits with his view that
something strange and heretofore unthinkable would come to succeed
Christianity[citation needed], just as Christ transformed the world upon his
appearance.[7] This image points rather to the sinister figure of Antichrist that
precedes the Second Coming of Christ.[8]
The "Spiritus Mundi" (Latin "spirit of the world") is a reference to Yeats' belief that
each human mind is linked to a single vast intelligence, and that this intelligence
causes certain universal symbols to appear in individual minds. Carl Jung's book
The Psychology of the Unconscious, published in 1912, could have had an
influence, with its idea of the collective unconscious.[citation needed]
The manticore or sphinx like beast described in the poem had long captivated
Yeats' imagination. He wrote in the introduction to his play The Resurrection, "I
began to imagine [around 1904], as always at my left side just out of the range of
sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic
destruction", noting that the beast was "Afterwards described in my poem 'The
Second Coming". However, there are some differences between the two
characters, mainly that the figure in the poem has no wings.
The phrase "stony sleep" is drawn from the mythology of William Blake. In
Blake's poem, Urizen falls, unable to bear the battle in heaven he has
provoked. To ward off the fiery wrath of his vengeful brother Eternals, he
frames a rocky womb for himself: "But Urizen laid in a stony sleep /
Unorganiz'd, rent from Eternity." During this stony sleep, Urizen goes
through seven ages of creation-birth as fallen man, until he emerges. This
is the man who becomes the Sphinx of Egypt.
ENGL 106, Spring, 2013, Dr. Harnett
Week 12 Class Notes, page 5
Note phrases that have been used as titles for movies and books:
“things fall apart”
“slouch[ing] toward Bethlehem”
Joni Mitchell’s song “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” using Yeats’ lyrics
http://www.lyricsmania.com/slouching_towards_bethlehem_lyrics_joni_mitch
ell.html
 “Sailing to Byzantium” http://www.webbooks.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Yeats/Sailing.htm
3. What is Byzantium? What is the meaning and significance of it as the
speaker’s sailing destination?
4. Summarize the message of each of the poem’s 4 stanzas.
5. Compare the first stanza with Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173664
6. Select one image or passage that stands out to you. Explain how the
passage is significant to the meaning of the poem.
“Lapis Lazuli” http://www.casparinstitute.org/lib/poemYeatsLapis.htm
7. Describe the objects in the poem that are made of lapis lazuli. Discuss
how the poem is based on a gift of an 18th century Chinese figure
carved from lapis lazuli.
8. Explain how these items on the carving figure in the development of
the poem’s message.
9. Compare to John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonagrecianurn.html
ENGL 106, Spring, 2013, Dr. Harnett
Week 12 Class Notes, page 6
For Next Time:
Read James Joyce, “Araby” and “Clay” at
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2814/2814-h/2814-h.htm#2H_4_0009
Also read D. H. Lawrence, “Snake” at
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/html/1807/4350/poem1252.html; other
selections TBA; poem index at
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/html/1807/4350/poet196.html .