Yeats’s Anniversary Conference: “Voice and Mask: Performing Identities”

Georgia State University, in association with
Université Charles de Gaulle – Lille III and Emory University

Atlanta, Georgia
15–16 May 2009

   

This conference seeks to address the whole corpus of Yeats’s poetic and dramatic works, as well as his prose writings.

Yeats’s impressive array of personae or masks combines with the conscious manipulation of voice, ranging from the remote and dignified to the trivial and lowly. Variations on voice and mask are decisive modalities of Yeats’s effort to recreate an oral tradition and thus contribute to the elaboration of Ireland’s cultural identity. On the other hand, they also relate to his histrionic propensity for “remaking himself” simultaneously with his own creation. Whether collective or individual, “identity” is thus envisaged as plural and dynamic, as performance rather than essence.

Thus, this paradoxical ontology of “voice and mask” in turn calls attention to the element of theatricality at the heart of Yeatsian aesthetics, in dramatic and non-dramatic forms alike. It also invites analyses of the ways in which literature overlaps with, and sometimes seeks to absorb, other art forms, in particular music and the visual arts; central to Yeats’s oeuvre, for instance, is the tension and constant alternation between stasis and kinetic energy.

Events include a keynote address by Professor James Pethica; display and discussion of archival materials housed in the Emory University Library; an exhibition of theater masks and other objects from productions of Yeats's plays; and a dramatic reading of "The Cat and the Moon" as well as a selection of poems.

Organizing committee:

Professor Margaret Mills Harper, Georgia State University
Professor Geraldine Higgins, Emory University
Dr. Elizabeth Muller, Université de Nantes
Professor Alexandra Poulain, Université Charles de Gaulle–Lille III

Please post this publicity flyer in your academic community.

Image: Louis le Brocquy, Image of W. B. Yeats, 1981

 

With special thanks to:

GSU Department of English

 

Georgia State University Research Foundation

 


Five Points

WB Yeats Foundation at Emory University