A Study Guide for William Butler Yeats's "The Stolen Child"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for William Butler Yeats's "The Stolen Child," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Sep 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535839778

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The Stolen Child

William Butler Yeats

1886

Introduction

The Stolen Child, by William Butler Yeats, tells about a child being enticed by fairies to go away with them. Based on Irish legend, the poem was written in 1886, at the beginning of Yeats's career, and is one of the best and most popular of his early poems. It was first published in Irish Monthly in December 1886. In 1888, it appeared in Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland, a collection of several poets' work, and in Yeats's book of folklore Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. In 1889, it appeared in Yeats's first book of poetry The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. The Stolen Child shows both the influence of romantic literature and Pre-Raphaelite verse and Yeats's desire to preserve and promote Irish literature. What Yeats did not realize until he got a few years deeper into his folklore work was that the romantic atmosphere of this poem was not typical of the robust and homely nature of Irish legends. Yeats originally thought that all Irish folk tales were melancholy, so he made his version of this tale dreamy and unearthly. Ironically, it was this tone that made the poem so popular because the Victorians liked stories about sensitive children who escape from this harsh world to a fairyland or magical place. In addition, the story was made to seem quite realistic by Yeats's use of local place names and precise imagery typical of County Sligo, his family home. The poem can be found in any number of collections of Yeats's poetry or in anthologies that include Yeats. One source is Collected Poems: Yeats, a 2003 Picador paperback that is also available in a 2009 Kindle edition.

Author Biography

Yeats was born on June 13, 1865, in Sandymount, County Dublin, Ireland. His father, John Butler Yeats, was studying law when he married Susan Mary Pollexfen from