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William Butler Yeats and his style of writing
William Butler Yeats and his style of writing
William Blake Yeats
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William Butler Yeats, born in 1865, is regarded as one of the pioneers of poetry in the 1900s. He is most well-remembered for his work focusing on the myths, folklore and history of Ireland, his home nation, but his other pieces have also found their way into the hearts of people around the world past and present. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to English and Irish literature. Along with Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot, he is one of the most famous canonical Modernist poets: a genre of literature characterized by the use of free verse, concision, and a more musical sound to their writings (Surette).
Born into a well-off Irish family, William Butler Yeats became accustomed to order and regularity at an early age. Being from a highly aristocratic family, Yeats would have been strongly impacted by the gain of momentum behind the nationalist movement and the backlash against the British Protestantism being forced into Ireland (a traditionally Catholic nation). He was well exposed to the arts and was encouraged to participate himself. He discovered his affinity for writing and reading poetry in his youth and continued to embrace his love for the two while he studied at the Metropolitan School of Art (Jeffares). One of his first known works, written at the age of seventeen was a poem about a magician that is known to have been heavily influenced by the writings of Percey Bysshe Shelley, a lyric English Romantic Poet who lived in the early 19th century (Woodring).
At the age of 22, the Yeats family returned to London, John Butler Yeats’ homeland. There, William became increasingly more interested in the Irish nationalism movement and met Maude Gonne, a fervent feminist and nationalist who he developed a...
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Valdez Moses , Michael. "The Poet As Politician - new biography of W.B. Yeats examines broader context of poet's life - Critical Essay - page 4 | Reason." BNET | News Articles, Magazine Back Issues & Reference Articles on All Topics. BNET - CBS, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2011. .
Yeats, W. B.. The W.B. Yeats collection . Alexandria, Va: Chadwyck-Healey, 1999. Print.
Foster, R. F.. W.B. Yeats: a life. 1, The apprentice Mage, 1865-1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print.
Surette, Leon. The birth of modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the occult. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993. Print.
Woodring, Carl. Politics in English romantic poetry . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970. Print.
Keats, John. “The Eve of St. Agnes”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic
William Yeats is deliberated to be among the best bards in the 20th era. He was an Anglo-Irish protestant, the group that had control over the every life aspect of Ireland for almost the whole of the seventeenth era. Associates of this group deliberated themselves to be the English menfolk but sired in Ireland. However, Yeats was a loyal affirmer of his Irish ethnicity, and in all his deeds, he had to respect it. Even after living in America for almost fourteen years, he still had a home back in Ireland, and most of his poems maintained an Irish culture, legends and heroes. Therefore, Yeats gained a significant praise for writing some of the most exemplary poetry in modern history
Wolfson, Susan and Peter Manning (eds.). The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. Volume 2A. New York: Longman, 1999.
Lucas, John. "Yeats." World Literature Criticism. Ed. James P. Draper. Detroit: Gale Publishing, 1992. 4110.
In regard to the Nationalists, he incorporates traditional Irish characters, such as Fergus and the Druids, to create an Irish mythology and thereby foster a national Irish identity. After the division of the Cultural Nationalists, Yeats feels left behind by the movement and disillusioned with their violent, "foolish" methods. He is also repeatedly rejected by Gonne. These efforts to instigate change through poetry both fail, bringing the function of the poet and his poetry into question. If these unfruitful poems tempt him from his ?craft of verse,?
The various levels of interpretation that a poet, such as W.B.Yeats, welcomes to his poems is difficult to grasp upon first reading his poetry. What appears to be a straight forward poem, such as, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, is actually an intellectual cultural criticism of Yeats’ modern day society. The poem, written as a testament to Lady Gregory’s son, captures the innermost concerns and perceptions of an Irish airman in World War I. However, through Yeats’ sentimental and poetic style, the poem incorporates a double meaning, and hence, focuses on Irish nationalism and its lack of an international consciencesness. The airman is Ireland personified, and his outlook on war and society is a window into the desolate situation that Ireland faces.
-Sixteenth Century English Poetry. N.E McClure Ed. Ursinus College, New york, Harper and Bros (1954)
Although Clarke isn’t named in Yeats later poem ‘Easter 1916’, he can be certainly linked to it as he sacrificed as much as Pearse, Connolly, MacDonagh and McBride. Due to him and others, Yeats stated that ‘all changed, changed utterly’. The pens of Clarke, Pearse and MacDonagh coined many intrinsic Nationalist ideals. As a result, it lead to much of Ireland’s finest arts and literature in this period, as well as many of the most intense cultural
How does the epigraph by W.B. Yeats (at the beginning of the book) relate to the novel?
Author of poetry, William Butler Yeats, wrote during the twentieth century which was a time of change. It was marked by world wars, revolutions, technological innovations, and also a mass media explosion. Throughout Yeats poems he indirectly sends a message to his readers through the symbolism of certain objects. In the poems The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The wild Swans at Cole, and Sailing to Byzantium, all by William Yeats expresses his emotional impact of his word choices and symbolic images.
Macheice, Louis. "The Ash of Poetry." The Poetry of W.B. Yeats. London: Oxford University Press, 1941. 139-141.
This refrain enforces his disgust at the type of money hungry people that the Irish have become. In the third and fourth stanza, however, Yeats completely changes the tone of his poetry. He praises the romantics of Irish history, such as Rob...
Yeats and Eliot are two chief modernist poet of the English Language. Both were Nobel Laureates. Both were critics of Literature and Culture expressing similar disquietude with Western civilization. Both, prompted by the Russian revolution perhaps, or the violence and horror of the First World War, pictured a Europe that was ailing, that was literally falling apart, devoid of the ontological sense of rational purpose that fuelled post-Enlightenment Europe and America(1). All these similar experience makes their poetry more valuable to compare and to contrast since their thoughts were similar yet one called himself Classicist(Eliot) who wrote objectively and the other considered himself "the last Romantic" because of his subjective writing and his interest in mysticism and the spiritual. For better understanding of these two poets it is necessary to mention some facts and backgrounds on them which influenced them to incorporate similar (to some extent) historical motif in their poetry.
Having a view of something that is different from what is traditional can often be frowned upon. During the Romantic period, the writers were swaying away from what was considered normal writing at that time. The church was a big influence on everyone during the Renaissance and if any one so much as “stepped out of line” the church made sure they were punished. Going against them was seen as going against God. A man named William Butler Yeats created a unique philosophical system woven from his own insights and the ideas of many thinkers. Yeats expressed himself using symbols which stand for something beyond itself, give rise to a number of associations, and intensifies feelings and adds complexity to meaning by concentrating these associations together. Using vivid language and rich symbols to make his argument, Yeats relies on the emotional impact of specific word choices and symbolic images to convey meaning and “convince” his readers. William Butler Yeats shows in “The Second Coming” and “Sailing to Byzantium” that the elements, gyres, and idea of a perfect place all add up to h...
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “A Defence of Poetry.” The Longman Anthology: British Literature: Volume 2A – The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc., 2003. 801-810.