“테살리에서 한 소년이 피리 불던 어떤 노래”: 1916년 부활절 봉기와 예이츠

Whether or not Yeats’s play Cathleen Ni Houlihan sent out certain men the English shot, it is striking to note the number of contemporaries who assert this to be the case or make similar claims about the influence of their own work. This paper will investigate the relationship between pen and sword in Ireland’s revolutionary period by examining Yeats’s canonical writings on the subject of the 1916 Rising in the context of a body of contemporary popular work produced on the same subject. This hitherto critically-neglected body of works forms a fresh context through which to re-examine Yeats’s controversial writings about the insurrection. Varying widely in style and artistry, they coalesce into a body of writing which asserts the power of verse to change the course of history, an idea which informs Yeats’s own writings.