| Abstract: | Yeats’On Baile’s Strand is an important work in the Irish Literary Revival. On Baile’s Strand is a thought-provoking ethical tragedy, and also a play that reflects the ideology of cultural nationalism of Yeats. In this play there is staged development from natural emotion, free emotion to ethical emotion and moral emotion. Cuchulain is motivated by his natural emotion and free emotion in most cases. He fails to take the ethical responsibility as a husband, father and little king, which aroused the jealousy, revenge and incrimination from Aoife and Conchubar. After killing his own son who he has never seen, Cuchulain regains his ration. His ethical emotion and moral emotion makes it impossible for him to withstand his guilt, even though he fights bravely in hundreds of wars and has killed numerous people. Finally, he goes to madness, and throws himself into the sea to fight against the waves. With Cuchulain’s tragedy of filicide and madness in On Baile’s Strand, Yeats warns Irish people of improving their morality and education, so as to promote the Irish national independence and national liberation. |
