How do Yeats, in "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," and Joyce both serve as voices for Irish literary heritage?

In Yeats's poem "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," the Irish pilot who narrates the poem expresses feelings of Irish nationalism. He says, "Those that I fight I do not hate / Those that I guard I do not love" (lines 3-4). In other words, he does not hate the Germans he fights in World War I, and he does not love the British forces he fights for. This poem, written in 1918 and published...

In Yeats's poem "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," the Irish pilot who narrates the poem expresses feelings of Irish nationalism. He says, "Those that I fight I do not hate / Those that I guard I do not love" (lines 3-4). In other words, he does not hate the Germans he fights in World War I, and he does not love the British forces he fights for. This poem, written in 1918 and published in 1919, was penned during a time when Ireland was fighting for independence from Great Britain.

Both Yeats and Joyce expressed, in different ways, feelings of Irish nationalism. Yeats was an Irish nationalist, and many of his early poems were inspired by Irish folklore. In this poem, the pilot speaks of his home. He says that "My country is Kiltartan Cross, / My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor" (lines 5-6). Like Yeats, the pilot feels that Ireland is his country, not Great Britain. James Joyce, also an Irish writer, was less overtly nationalist than Yeats, but many of his works, including the famous Ulysses and Dubliners, take place in Dublin. While his works criticize the stagnation of Dublin at times, it is clear that Dublin is Joyce's imaginative universe and his inspiration. Therefore, he is also a voice of Irish nationalism—one that resonates with the nationalist thoughts the pilot expresses in "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death."