William Butler Yeats was born in Sandy mount，County Dublin，Ireland on June 13th，1865.His father John was a law student who later pursued art，and young William and his siblings moved back and forth between Dublin and London during much of their _________.

Most of their holidays were _________with their mother's family in Sligo，a region whose landscape，culture and folklore（民俗）_________ his own works.

While his family belonged to the main Protestant minority which _________ themselves with the British，Yeats firmly _________ himself Irish. Indeed many of his poems and plays reflect Irish legends and castles. In 1885，Yeats started _________ poems as a young man of 20.Many of his early works were later published as The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems.

He became _________ in politics，which resulted in his becoming an Irish senator（参议员）in 1922 when the Irish Free State was formed. He _________ for 6 years but continued to _________ well into his seventies.

Later in London，he also co-founded the Rhymer's Club for __________ to share their verses，with his own __________becoming popular with other poets.In1899，as Yeats began writing dramas，he established the Irish Literary Theatre __________ other like-minded people to stage Irish plays. His __________ were influenced by the Japanese Noh style of writing，a type of traditional Japanese theatre which tended to be musical rather than __________ on prose.

Yeats became __________ when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923，becoming one of the first Irish laureates（桂冠诗人）.His book The Tower was set in his own __________，which he had bought and restored. __________，many of his best works were written when he was well past 50，and they continue to be __________ today.

In 1939，Yeats died in France on a trip there. He was __________ at Roquebrune，but according to his __________，his remains were later taken to Sligo and buried at Drumcliff in 1948.

Growing Pains 104

   Tang Dynasty poets sang for about three centuries in different tones. There were many famous poets living in the Tang period such as Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi and Li Shangyin. Quan Tangshi edited in the Qing Dynasty is a collection of about 48, 900 poems that were written by over 2, 200 poets. But it doesn't cover all the poems of the Tang Dynasty.

During the Tang Dynasty, poems were recited when lovers walked under the moonlight. Poems were also recited when soldiers fought on the battlefield. People recited them in the open air or at temple fairs.

In the Tang Dynasty scholars（学者）had to be poets. Their readers were not only people of high social position but also common people. Poets recited poems；women singers sang poems and other ranks of people, including old women and children, read Tang poems. This atmosphere affected foreigners who visited the country at that time. As a result, Tang poetry was introduced to some adjacent countries, like Japan and Vietnam.

Tang poetry is a most brilliant page in the history of ancient Chinese literature. It's a miracle（奇迹）in the cultural history of mankind. The Tang Dynasty was a powerful empire with a vast territory. It inherited（继承）Chinese civilization that went back to ancient times, and was combined with the best of other cultures and adopted the benefits of other nations in the world. Tang poetry wasn’t the only spiritual wealth created by people of the Tang Dynasty. Philosophy, handwriting, painting, music and dance all gained new peaks of development. Tang poetry, however, was the jewel in the crown and the greatest achievement in the Tang Dynasty.

   Following Mo Yan's Nobel Prize , the usually silent Chinese literary circle got warmed up again. A Shanghai writer named Jin Yucheng surprised nearly everyone by making his novel full of Shanghai dialect.

Published in 2012, the 350,000-word Blossoms （Fan Hua） is a novel about the changes in Shanghai over 30 years, drawing clear images of the city through the stories of many common people. There is no main story like most novels, but every story in it could run independently. While putonghua is the standard choice for Chinese literature today, Jin's use of the Shanghai dialect appears both different and bold.

"I have seen too many novels that look similar to each other. Chinese literature is getting monotonous in both language and form. I want to be special with my own language, " Jin told the Global Times.

In the novel, Jin makes a breakthrough by mainly using dialogues to unfold various plots and represent typical characters on a daily basis. He also abandons the use of some punctuation like quotation marks （引号）, showing a return to the traditional Chinese huaben genre.

Since its publication, the book has been widely recommended on Sina Weibo with many netizens rating the novel high for its unique use of dialect and vivid description of life using plain speech.

Jin said that he got the idea of writing the novel while chatting in an online forum where people use the Shanghai dialect. The praise he received from the netizens encouraged him to continue writing the random stories.

"I'd like to see more writers to follow my lead. It will enrich our literature and make it diverse," he said.