Irish nationalism and the uncanny: a reading of "The ghost of Roger Casement"

Of the several fictional works about the Irish revolutionary Roger David Casement, none has reached the notoriety of William Butler Yeats's poem "The ghost of Roger Casement" (1936). Roger Casement is known for acting as British Consul in Africa and in Brazil, having reported atrocities committed against the natives in these regions by imperial rubber companies. The aftermath of having witnessed the effects of such atrocities eventually turned Casement against the British Empire for which he was sentenced to death for high treason. However, the heart of the controversy that surrounds his afterlife lies in the fact that he was prevented from achieving martyrdom because a set of homosexual diaries was found by the British Foreign Office and prevented a reprieve. This paper investigates, in the first place, the background in which the poem was written and to trace the mutual influence and admiration Roger Casement and WB Yeats felt for each other. In the second, it demonstrates that Casement's uncanny representation in "The ghost of Roger Casement" is the result of the merging of Yeats's knowledge of Celtic mythology and folklore combined with his nationalist views towards Ireland and negative impressions of British imperialism.