W.B. Yeats lived through an era of political transformation in Ireland and was an acute witness to the dramatic developments that unfolded during his lifetime. Born on the eve of the Fenian rising, he lived to see Ireland under its 1937 constitution, as an independent republic in all but name. Although the words “smiling public man” were written in the 1920s, Dan Mulhall will argue that Yeats was a “public man” throughout his life as a writer, and that his poetry was heavily influenced by the “indomitable” Irishness he wrote about in “Under Ben Bulben.” This talk will examine the Ireland of Yeats’s time-the literary revival, the Easter Rising, the war of independence, the civil war, and the emergence and consolidation of the Irish Free State-using the poet’s life and work as a viewfinder.
A native of Waterford, Dan Mulhall pursued his undergraduate and post-graduate studies at University College Cork where he specialised in modern Irish history and literature, under the mentorship of Professor Joe Lee. He joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1978 and served as Ireland’s Ambassador to Malaysia from 2001 to 2005, Ambassador to Germany from 2009 to 2013, Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2013 to 2017, and Ambassador to the United States from 2017 to 2022.
7 мар 2024
