“Begin, begin, of some old king and queen, [o]f Lugaid Redstripe or another”: “Modernizing” the “Medieval” in William Butler Yeats’s Deirdre

Abstract

This article explores the intersection of William Butler Yeats’s political and artistic aspirations—that is, his reimagining of Irish myth —as it informs his depiction of Deirdre, the title character of his 1907 play. Specifically, it examines Yeats’s protagonist in light of three figures from the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology: her namesake, Derdriu, who appears in Longes Mac n-Uislenn (The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu); Derbforgaill, the title character of Aided Derbforgaill (The Violent Death of Derbforgaill); and Etain from Togail Bruidne Da Derga (The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel) and Tochmarc Etaine (The Wooing of Etain). In demonstrating that Deirdre’s allusions to Derbforgaill (to whom it refers throughout as “the seamew”) and Etain accentuate the extent to which it conventionalizes Longes Mac n-Uislenn’s by domesticating both the setting of the original narrative and Derdriu herself in identifying its title character with societal norms and stereotypically female traits and, most significantly, by mitigating her relationship to violence, this analysis complicates Yeats’s status as a modernist through its