Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

Among School Children
FORM AND
STRUCTURE

-

Ottava Rima = type of structure/verse used for reflective poetry
Rhythm of Yeats’ Irish accent is apparent in his writing
A rhythm and sensuality to the last verse
Use of ‘child’ in each verse
Verses are numbered, idea of structuring and organising of experiences, similar
to children counting + classical references in verses to teachers: Plato, Aristotle, a
development of knowledge

CONTEXT

-

1926 Yeats as a school inspector visited a school in Waterford, taught by nuns
Yeats was conflicted as to whether Catholicism should be imposed on the
children or not
The children are learning biased history, influenced by Catholicism
Second verse is reference to Maud Gonne, she was his inspiration

THEMES

QUOTES
AND
ANALYSIS

Knowledge & Religion

Love – Maud & Beauty

‘There is a comfortable
kind of old scarecrow’
- Scarecrows are
there to
manipulate,
affecting the
crops of learning,
the seeds in the
field are the
knowledge that
is being
manipulated by
the nuns

‘Or else, to alter Plato’s parable,
Into the yolk and white of the
one shell’
- Plato’s symposium,
myth of the egg which
the serpent separated,
creating Earth and Sky
‘So saying, he cut those
human beings in two,
the way people cut sorb
apples before they dry
them or the way they
cut eggs with hairs

---