Yeats, Said and decolonization

Abstract

How can Yeats’s cultural nationalism be understood within the context of the constantly evolving field of postcolonial studies? Some critics have argued that Edward Said, in his essay “Yeats and Decolonization”, overlooked W.B. Yeats’s Protestant ascendancy roots and elitism, traits which would actually place Yeats in the anti-revolutionary and colonizing camp rather than the decolonizing, liberationist one claimed for him by Said. However, such arguments ignore the key role of culture in paving the way for either colonization or (as in Yeats’s case) decolonization. The importance of Yeats’s place in this process was eloquently argued by Said. In fact, to separate the cultural from the political is to underestimate the all-important role of culture in the decolonization process, especially as the culture of the colonized is first and foremost placed under erasure. This article argues that Yeats’s Protestant sympathies and disagreements with the Catholic revolutionaries of his day do not make him and his work any less revolutionary and anti-colonial, especially when his Irish situation is seen in comparison with similar contexts in the Arab world.

Keywords:

• William Butler Yeats
• Edward Said
• decolonization
• Ireland
• cultural nationalism
• culture