Essay Undergraduate 1,433 words

Yeats and Boland: Irish Bardic Tradition and Modern Verse

~8 min read 5 sections Literature · Poetry

Abstract

This essay examines the literary relationship between William Butler Yeats and Eavan Boland, two Irish poets separated by nearly a century yet united by the bardic tradition of Irish verse. Drawing on Yeats's Nobel Lecture and poem "To Ireland in the Coming Times," the essay explores how he positioned the Irish poet as a national mouthpiece. It then considers how Boland inherits and revises this tradition, incorporating women's voices and domestic experience previously absent from Irish poetry. Boland's poem "The Pomegranate" serves as a central text, illustrating how her maternal obligations sometimes conflict with the traditional patriotic duties of the Irish bard.

Key Takeaways

The Bardic Tradition and Irish Poetry: Shared Irish heritage and the bardic poet's role
Yeats as Tribal Poet: Yeats uses poetry as national and tribal voice
Boland's Revision of the Irish Poetic Voice: Boland adds women's voices to the tradition
Myth, Motherhood, and Competing Obligations: Pomegranate myth frames maternal versus bardic duty
Conclusion: Both poets inhabit bardic tradition differently

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What makes this paper effective

It grounds the comparison in a specific, well-defined concept — the bardic "tale of the tribe" — giving the argument a clear through-line across both poets.
It balances close reading (analyzing specific poetic lines and devices such as synecdoche) with broader literary-historical context, such as Yeats's Nobel Lecture and Ezra Pound's influence.
The paper uses direct quotations from primary sources to let both poets articulate their own poetic philosophies before the author intervenes with analysis.

Key academic technique demonstrated

The paper demonstrates effective comparative literary analysis: it establishes a shared framework (the Irish bardic tradition) before systematically identifying where the two poets diverge. By using Boland's own statements alongside close readings of her poetry, the essay avoids reducing her to a simple reaction against Yeats and instead presents her as both an inheritor and a transformer of the tradition.

Structure breakdown

The essay opens by establishing the shared Irish poetic heritage, then uses Yeats's Nobel Lecture and "To Ireland in the Coming Times" to define the nationalist-bardic model. It next introduces Boland's critical departure — her inclusion of women's voices — and analyzes "The Pomegranate" in detail to show how maternal identity creates a tension with traditional bardic duty. The conclusion synthesizes both poets' positions within the tradition.

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Essay 1,433 words

The Bardic Tradition and Irish Poetry

While William Butler Yeats and Eavan Boland may be united by a common nationality and literary heritage, they are divided by almost a full century. Boland, as an Irish poet living after Yeats, has certainly been indebted to his influence. Ignoring such a debt would indeed be impossible, and Boland herself has admitted to the importance of Yeats's Irishness to her:

There were great and wonderful Irish male poets, all of whom I found inspiring in different ways. It meant an enormous amount to me in a very tribal way that William Yeats was Irish. And I would have liked, I suppose, to include in that tribalism a woman as well. (Boland and Quinn, "The Stoicisms of Love")

Boland here admits that she sees herself in a line of Irish poets and that she has a literally "tribal" kinship with them. While this may seem like a strange image for Boland to employ, one must remember the long and distinguished oral tradition of poetry in Ireland, in which poets told important stories from the history and culture of their people. Boland ultimately argues for the importance of this "bardic" tradition in Irish literature, suggesting it is Irish national poetry's defining characteristic:

Irish poetry has a bardic history. The Irish bards lay down in darkness to compose. They wrote poems to their patrons that ranged from christening odes to the darkest invective. They were poets who were shaped by an oral culture... (Boland and Schmidt, "Where Poetry Begins")

In arguing for this tradition of the Irish bardic poet, Boland also offers a meaningful insight into how she sees the role of the poet — particularly the Irish poet — both in tradition and today. For Boland, part of the role of the poet within the Irish tradition is to tell the "tale of the tribe," the phrase Ezra Pound used to describe his epic poetic work, The Cantos (Bernstein). This idea of the poet as speaker for the whole of the "tribe" can be seen in the poetry of William Butler Yeats as well.

4 Sections Hidden · 710 words

Yeats as Tribal Poet280 words

It is interesting to note that, in his Nobel Lecture, "The Irish Dramatic Movement," William Butler Yeats chooses to assign the creation of modern Irish literature to a national political cause — the death of the great Irish patriot and politician Parnell — saying that "The modern literature of Ireland, and indeed all that stir of thought which prepared for the Anglo-Irish War, began when Parnell fell from power in 1891" (Yeats, "The Irish Dramatic Movement"). Here we see the idea that the Irish poet serves to…

Boland's Revision of the Irish Poetic Voice130 words

The main difference in Boland's vision of the poet acting as a mouthpiece for Ireland is that Boland seeks to bring in voices that had remained unheard in traditional Irish poetry. As she herself has stated, "when I was young in Ireland,…

Myth, Motherhood, and Competing Obligations220 words

The poem begins by considering the myth but quickly moves to examine the role of that myth in describing the relationship between mother and daughter. In this movement, Boland begins to compare the new world —…

Conclusion80 words

Thus, while Yeats and Boland are both poets who see themselves as part of an ongoing and fluid Irish bardic tradition, Boland differs in that she also gives voice to her obligations as a mother and admits that those obligations may be in conflict with her traditional poetic duties to remain constant to Irish culture. In this way, Boland both honors and transforms the tradition she…

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Bibliography

Bernstein, Michael. The Tale of the Tribe: Ezra Pound and the Remaking of American Poetic Tradition. Berkeley: U. of California P, 1992.

Boland, Eavan. "Interview." Caffeine Destiny. Apr. 23, 2003.

Boland, Eavan. "The Pomegranate." The Academy of American Poets Web Site. Apr. 22, 2003.

Boland, Eavan, and Alice Quinn. "The Stoicisms of Love." The New Yorker Online. Apr. 23, 2003.

Boland, Eavan, and Elizabeth Schmidt. "Where Poetry Begins: An Interview with Eavan Boland." Academy of American Poets Web Site. Apr. 23, 2003.

Yeats, William Butler. "The Irish Dramatic Movement." Nobel Lecture, December 15, 1923. Apr. 23, 2003.

Yeats, William Butler. "To Ireland in Coming Times." Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats. M. L. Rosenthal, ed. New York: Collier Books, 1962.

Key Concepts in This Paper

Bardic Tradition Irish Nationalism Tribal Voice Eavan Boland W.B. Yeats The Pomegranate Women's Poetry Mythological Allusion Maternal Identity Literary Heritage