Book Review: History, Biography and a Touch of the Poet (original) (raw)
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The Politics of W. B. Yeats's Poetic Expression
Introduction William Butler Yeats is a name that is familiar to almost everyone. It infuses something great and splendid immediately after hearing it. Indeed, Yeats was considered one of the most magnificent Irish national poets of all time. He loved his country, and he was not afraid to show it through his poems and his political engagement. Living at a crucial period in Irish history, his poetry is linked to the struggle for national self-definition. He had a somewhat interesting life, as most poets do, however, what really strikes the most about him is his deep passion for mysticism and occult matters. Many of his poems are interwoven with some kind of mystic touch, no matter what the theme of his writing is. My own passion for astrology and occultism makes me sympathize with Yeats even more than I would, knowing he was a very good poet alone. He was a theosophist, and his belief in reincarnation and spiritual evolution could not be more in line with my own spiritual beliefs. The fact that he lived his life to the full, adorning his poetry with passion and energy, believing in the power of Irish people and Irish legends, and never giving in to the sorrows of his unrequited love for Maude Gonne, infuses a great respect and admiration for the poet on my behalf. He once wrote the following words: “What can be explained is not poetry”, and I believe it is much more than poetry that is impossible to explain about such an intricate and profound figure as W. B. Yeats. In spite of my deep interest in occultism, this paper is predominately focused on Yeats’s political and public engagement and how his deep passion for Ireland is reflected in his work. Further, I explain the political background in the world at the time and how it might influence the situation in Ireland, as well as Yeats’s personal attitude towards the events taking place in his country. Finally, I focus on Yeats’s political views as they are presented in his poetical expression and analyze one of his greatest works, Easter 1916.
The critical discussion I engage in this essay—illustrative of the politicizing not only of literature, but of literary study—was begun in the eighties, and fell silent in the late nineties, but it still matters for a couple of reasons. First, it concerns specifically the role of literature in creating cultural and political identities—the consequential praxis of any act of reading or writing: literary, critical, or otherwise. Second, with bigger fish to fry, the world seems to have forgotten Irish difficulties; the Irish, I presume, have not. Moreover, in an academe increasingly animated by debate about the nature and effect of globalization and the counter-current of (especially) American imperialism (political, economic, and cultural) in the East and in the West on “smaller” cultures and political systems, we had better not forget that when it comes to political and cultural imperialism we haven’t very far to look—in history or geography—for evidence that cultures and cultural identities under threat do not go quietly. Part I of this essay, “The Debate,” deals with the terms of a debate between Denis Donoghue and Seamus Deane as an extension of a decades-old argument about the way to read literary texts, and suggests that ideology is imminent in any programme of reading. Part II, “Donoghue’s Alternative,” deals with Donoghue’s own programme, which emphasizes the limits of form, but which ultimately fails to judge Yeats’ poetry and mythology without the force of cultural and ideological awareness. Part III, “Political Necessity,” tries to read “Ancestral Houses” as an individual poem, but quickly confirms the necessity of political and contextual awareness in engaging with any of Yeats’ poems as a constituent of a greater mythology which is itself ideologically oriented.
The Construction of a National Identity: W. B. Yeats’ Poetry
Dicle Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 2021
Yeats is the most prominent devotee and initiator of the Irish Literary Revival in the early 20th century. Irishness/Irish culture was a theme he handled since his early ages. His poetic themes ranging from love to the art of poetry are preoccupied with the theme of Irishness reinforced with images and stories from Irish/Celtic mythologies and present Irish sites. Yeats' praxis of mythic/past elements together with Irish sites in his poetic universe creates bondage between old and present Irishness. Hence his poetry is turned into a declaration of opinions and intentions on an idealized Irish culture. This study aims at presenting how Yeats is manifesting an ideology to fight for a heritage and national identity by visiting Irish and Celtic mythologies as well as current Irish sites, thus creating a performative discourse in his poetry that promotes conceptual and practical understanding of Irishness to be exercised.
Yeats's versions of literary history, 1896-1903
1998
This study examines the critical prose written by William Butler Yeats in the period 1896-1903, and identifies the evolution within it of a mode of literary history. I concentrate on Ideas of Good and Evil, and on the selected edition Poems of Spenser. The introduction examines notions of golden ages and of original fracture, and the insertion of these tropes into a variety of literary histories. I consider some of the aims and problems of literary history as a genre, and the peculiar solutions offered by Yeats's approaches. I give particular attention to Yeats's alternation between two views of poetry: as evading time, and as forming the significant history of nations. The first chapter examines those essays in Ideas of Good and Evil written earliest. I consider the essays on Blake first, because Blake was the most significant influence on the writing of Yeats's idiosyncratic literary histories. I proceed to the essays on Shelley, on a new age of imaginative community, and on magic. The second chapter demonstrates how Yeats's ideals and ideas became modified in more practical considerations of audience, poetic rhythm and theatrical convention, and I identify the new kinds of literary history in the essays on Morris and Shakespeare, which are concerned with fracture, limitation and the loss of unmediated access to timeless imaginative resources. The third chapter briefly examines Yeats's very early imitations of Edmund Spenser, and then considers the uses of literary history in Yeats's edition of Spenser. The final chapter identifies Yeats's later returns to Spenser, and shows how the earlier modes of literary history governed subsequent adaptations. My conclusion summarises the advantages and limitations of Yeatsian literary history, and place my study into the context of Yeats's whole career, comparing these literary histories with A Vision.
Yeats Revisited by Kathleen Raine
ABEI Journal, 2015
It is frequently stated that Yeats is a great poet despite the fact that his mind, tastes and inclinations were dangerously or eccentrically turned to mysterious or mystified matters. It is Kathleen Raine's contention that, far from being too credulous, Yeats was extremely conscious of his advances in this type of knowledge; and that words such as esoteric, occultism, hermetic lore and some others are more often misunderstood. The Academy misreads Yeats in the same way that it has misread Blake or Shelley. That traditional background is not the one which the Academy usually deals with. Yeats did not write his poems to provide material for doctoral theses but to heal and sustain our human condition. Yeats's poems related to the Irish Renaissance are concerned with an Ireland of the Imagination. In Kathleen's opinion, Yeats remains a poet in the traditional sense of the word, not in the modern one. The traditional meaning would account for a speaker of wisdom, truth and the tradition of the Imagination.
A Study of Yeats’s Poetic Discourse Versus the Concept of History
2015
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2022
Beginning of Yeats: Introduction "Our thoughts are not, as we suppose, the deep but the foam upon the deep."-W.B. Yeats in his The Philosophy of Shelley's Poetry (1900) Symbols, in their exactness means the presence of a meaning which is more substantial than it seems on the surface and perhaps we owe it to symbols that there exist more than a singular meaning of the device that projects them. Uses of images and symbols are only one of the natural devices deployed in the art of poetry to reverberate and enhance the meaning of any piece of work into a non-linear one, to have multi-dimensional interpretations of it, ultimately to reach out to a broader audience with an even broader message. One of the most prominent and highly celebrated artists, who was the chief representative of the symbolist movement in English Literature, W.B Yeats has densely incorporated personalised symbols in his work in order to enhance the reality of present and mystery and richness of past. He uses an adapt arsenal of symbols across work that we shall try and map out while using the poems we have in our syllabus; No Second Troy (1916), The Second Coming (1920), Leda and the Swan (1924) and Sailing to Byzantium (1928) and some extensive investigation into the evolving author.