叶芝TheSecondComing细节分析.ppt

“The Second Coming” By William Butler Yeats The Second Coming Chinua Achebe takes the title for his novel Things Fall Apart from a line in a classic Western modernist poem The Second Coming (written in 1919; published in 1921), by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939; Irish poet). So in order to understand the novel, we’ll need to understand the poem The Second Coming Created an elaborate mythology to explain the entire history of human experience Uses interest in spiritual and occult to predict the rise of an inhuman world Poem written after the catastrophe of World War I and with communism and fascism on the rise History moved in two thousand-year cycles. The Christian era, which followed that of the ancient world, was about to end and an ominous period was about to begin. ( extracted from Paul Brians) The Second Coming Achebe’s novel is an answer to Yeats’ poem In the novel, there is a cultural clash between the African Igbo tribe and the British Christian missionaries The novel itself is an allusion and the poem we are about to read contains several allusions to Christianity and Bible Keep the themes of this poem in mind as we read--we will frequently discuss how the novel both responds to and changes Yeats’ message in the poem The Second Coming What is the meaning of the phrase Things Fall Apart within Yeats poem? What does the Second Coming refer to in Yeats poem? What is Yeats’ overall message in the poem? * *