interpretation of yeats' "the second coming" world lit ii ptc
DESCRIPTION
Here is a slide show interpreting "The Second Coming" as a critique of imperialism in general and the the British Empire specifically. You should be able to see how it challenges imperialism in addition to "anticipating" the rise of totalitarian regimes during the interwar period on In Europe.TRANSCRIPT
Text
“The Second Coming”As Critique of British Imperialism, Revealing the Similarities between Imperialist and Totalitarian Ideologies
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
Literacy
Printing Press
Imperialism
The “Individual
”
“Cogito ergo sum”
Descartes
Marxism
Capitalism
Darwinism
Eugenics
Cult of Personality
Totalitarianism
Copernican Revolution
Protestant Reformation
Nietzsche
Fin de Siecle
Decadence
Nihilism
Positivism
DualismCrusades
Holy Roman Empire
Neoclassicism
Byzantine Empire
RousseauRadical
Individualism
Industrial Revolution
French Revolutio
n
Depression
Sanctions
Stripped of imperial power
World War I
Nationalism
Racism
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
Soviet-engineered “drought”—Ukraine: 1932-1933
Belgian Congo and South Africa, late 19th century
British Empire: Madras (southern India) family starving, 1878
Holocaust, 1933-1945
Hiroshima, 1945
Armenian genocide, Ottoman Empire,
World War I
Wounded Knee, 1890Native American Genocide: 100 million
Atlantic Slave Trade:Portugal, France, Spain, Britain, the Netherlands,
Denmark, Sweden, 1500-1900 Stalinist Purges: 1933-1958
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Benito Mussolini Joseph Stalin Francisco Franco
Adolph Hitler State-sponsored book burningMay 10, 1933
Surely some revelation is at hand;Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are the words outWhen a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight:
somewhere in the sands of the desertA shape with lion body and head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about itReel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?