A Study on Easter, 1916 from the Perspective of the Ideational Function

Easter, 1916 is a classic work of Irish poet Yeats, describing four leaders in Irish raising and expressing Yeats’ complicated attitudes toward the rebellion. Being different from the traditional view of history, the study interprets the poem by analyzing its clauses from the perspective of functional grammar. It is concluded that a large amount of material process are used to represent the experiences of the characters, which realizes the narrative function of a poem. Relational process, the identifying one particularly, highlights the beliefs of revolutionaries and Yeats’ suspicion of their sacrifice. But finally, the mental, verbal and behavioural processes rebuild his support for the uprising and the nationalism represented by it.