William Butler Yeats and William Blake

2712 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The Influence of William Blake

William Butler Yeats and William Blake

A study of William Butler Yeats is not complete without a study of William Blake, just as a study of Blake is greatly aided by a study of Yeats. The two poets are inexorably tied together. Yeats, aided by his study of Blake, was able to find a clearer poetic voice. Yeats had a respect for and an understanding of Blake's work that was in Yeats' time without parallel. Yeats first read Blake at the age of 15 or 16 when his father gave him Blake to read. Yeats writes in his essay "William Blake and the Imagination" that "...when one reads Blake, it is as though the spray of an inexhaustible fountain of beauty was blown into our faces (Yeats, Essays xxx)." Yeats believed Blake to be a genius and he never wavered in his opinion. It is his respect for Blake that caused him to study and emulate Blake. He tried to tie Blake closer to himself by stressing Blake's rumored Irish ancestry. He strove to understand Blake more clearly than anyone had before him, and he succeeded. As with other pursuits Yeats held nothing back. He immersed himself fully in Blake's writings. As with many of his mental pursuits he deepened his understanding of the subject by writing about it.

In 1887 he wrote his essay "William Blake and the Imagination." This essay articulated his thoughts on the genius of the poet William Blake. He still however had not conceived his full vision of Blake's works. In 1889 he approached Edwin Ellis, a friend of his father's, for assistance in understanding Blake. Ellis wrote of this meeting "Very little could be given him to satisfy so large a demand, but with his eye for symbolic systems, he needed no more to enable him to perceive that here was a myth as well worth studying as any that has been offered to the world (Ellis, Vol I ix)." Thus began Yeats' and Ellis' collaboration on William Blake. This collaboration came to fruition, after four years of work, with the 1893 publication of their The Works of William Blake Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical.

It has been acknowledged by many scholars that Yeats' study of Blake greatly influenced his poetic expression. This gives rise to the widely held assertion that Yeats is indebted to Blake. While I concur with this assertion, I feel that the perhaps greater debt is Blake's.

Show More
Related

  • Combined Experience of Suffering, Death and Love all at Once

    1547 Words  | 4 Pages

    John Keats’s illness caused him to write about his unfulfillment as a writer. In an analysis of Keats’s works, Cody Brotter states that Keats’s poems are “conscious of itself as the poem[s] of a poet.” The poems are written in the context of Keats tragically short and painful life. In his ...

    Read More

  • The Irish Troubles: Yeat's Poetry

    2033 Words  | 5 Pages

    William Butler Yeats, born in Dublin, Ireland [June 13, 1865], is considered by many to be one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. The following exposition, grounded on the hypothesis that Yeats’ poetry was resolutely influenced by the political occurrences of that time period, will give biographical information, a recounting of the political upheaval during that period, specific poetry excerpts/critical analysis and validation of hypothesis.

    Read More

  • The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

    2332 Words  | 5 Pages

    Although many of the Romantic poets displayed a high degree of anxiety concerning the way in which their works were produced and transmitted to an audience, few, if any, fretted quite as much as William Blake did. Being also a highly accomplished engraver and printer, he was certainly the only one of the Romantics to be able to completely move beyond mere fretting. Others may have used their status or wealth to exert their influence upon the production process, but ultimately, they were at the mercy of editors, publishers, and printers and relied on others to turn their visions into published works. Blake, on the other hand, was his own editor, engraver, printer, and publisher. He was able to control to the minutest detail every single aspect of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell from conception all the way to the selling of the finished volume. Short of being his own purchaser, Blake achieved the highest possible degree of control over the work’s transmission, and considering that there are only nine known complete copies of the work (twelve total including variants and uncolored prints), even the audience itself was almost handpicked (Ackroyd, 265).

    Read More

  • The Sidhe, the Tuatha de Danaan, and the Fairies in Yeats's Early Works

    2681 Words  | 6 Pages

    Yeats, W.B. The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, 2nd revised ed. Ed. Richard J. Finneran.

    Read More

  • Anaysis of William Blake's The Lamb, The Tyger, and Proverbs of Hell

    1165 Words  | 3 Pages

    Natoli, Joseph. "William Blake." Critical Survey Of Poetry, Second Revised Edition (2002): 1-12. Literary Reference Center. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.

    Read More

  • William Blake Essay

    666 Words  | 2 Pages

    William Blake is remembered by his poetry, engravements, printmaking, and paintings. He was born in Soho, London, Great Britain on November 28, 1757. William was the third of seven siblings, which two of them died from infancy. As a kid he didn’t attend school, instead he was homeschooled by his mother. His mother thought him to read and write. As a little boy he was always different. Most kids of his age were going to school, hanging out with friends, or just simply playing. While William was getting visions of unusual things. At the age of four he had a vision of god and when he was nine he had another vision of angles on trees.

    Read More

  • The Mental Traveller by William Blake

    1708 Words  | 4 Pages

    William Blake is a literature genius. Most of his work speaks volume to the readers. Blake’s poem “The Mental Traveller” features a conflict between a male and female that all readers can relate to because of the lessons learned as you read. The poet William Blake isn’t just known for just writing. He was also a well-known painter and a printmaker. Blake is considered a seminal figure in the history of poetry. His poems are from the Romantic age (The end of the 18th Century). He was born in Soho, London, Great Britain. He was the third of seven children. Even though Blake was such an inspiration as a writer he only went to school just enough to read and write. According to Bloom’s critical views on William Blake; one of Blake’s inspirations was the Bible because he believed and belonged to the Moravian Church.

    Read More

  • Innocence in William Blake's The Divine Image

    2202 Words  | 5 Pages

    Frye, Northrop. "Poetry and Design in William Blake." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 10 (Sept., 1951) 35-42.

    Read More

  • The Influence Of Being Lent: The Importance Of Being Earnest

    911 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Importance of Being Earnest was first played in 1894 during the Victorian era. Oscar Wilde was educated at Oxford, he prospered in College and settled in London in 1878, where he was accepted into the upper-class and aristocratic circles of the society at the time. In this society he developed a set of values and attitudes in which influenced his works. The Victorian era was the period in history in which there was a rigid social class structure in which comprised of a large working class, the upper class, the aristocracy and the royal family. This rigid structure was upheld by a strong patriarchal society which was perceived to make moral decisions. The Victorian era was a time in whi...

    Read More

  • Comparison of William Butler Yeats Poems The Lake Isle of Innestree, The Wild Swans at Cole, and Sailing to Byzantium

    536 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Signs and Symptoms of Malaria

    853 Words  | 2 Pages

    Malaria is a deadly disease, responsible for 300,000,000 malaria-infected people and over a million deaths annually. It is caused by malaria parasites that have infected mosquitoes, so the disease is transferred into a person’s blood when the mosquito bites us. Malaria-diseased people experience fevers and chills that lingers every few days. The diagnosis of malaria is identified in their blood along with the symptoms. Malaria requires different treatment for mild cases or more severe ones, like mild circumstances usually need an oral medication, but serious conditions need a hospital visit. Again, the aftermath of a person with malaria depends on how dangerous it is, but full recovery is expected for moderate malaria. The prevention of malaria is mainly eluding mosquitoes and taking antimalarial medicines. Hopefully, you will understand the fatality that malaria has caused, and acknowledge it.

    Read More

  • Precipitation Hardening Process

    953 Words  | 2 Pages

    Precipitation hardening is a process that using very high temperature to strengthen an object such as , metal alloy and aluminium , precipitation hardening process also referred to age hardening . There are three main process that involve in Precipitation Hardening , the first process is Solution Treatment , second process is Quenching , and thirdly is Aging . On the other hand , Dispersion strengthening only have two process which is aluminium alloys made by powder metallurgy are used in the nuclear power field for sheathing fuel rods , and also used for heat exchanger tubing and high temperature turbine blades . It is presently receiving significant attention in the design of a variety of advanced power generation and aerospace devices , such as interactive components in magnetic confinement fusion reactor , rotating –source neutron targets , rocket nozzles , combustion chamber liners and combustor walls and leading edges . These applications require materials with a high thermal conductivity in combination with a high elevated temperature strength in oxygen or hydrogen .

    Read More

  • Essay Questions on Cathechism and Morality

    1186 Words  | 3 Pages

    You have a total of 4 essays worth 25 points each. Make sure you have responded to 4 essays and download your responses to turnitin.com by the end of the exam period.

    Read More

  • Oscar Wilde Essay

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    Oscar Wilde had a quick and fluid intelligence coupled with a gift for languages. His early education included attending Porotra Royal School in Enniskillen (1873) Trinity College in Dublin (1874-1879), and Magdalen College in Oxford. He excelled in his studies. Along with his schoolwork, Wilde began to build his reputation as a poet. His early work garnered some success. In 1878, Oscar Wilde won the Newdigate prize for poetry. His entry was inspired by a vacation to Ravenna.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Grey Cast Iron

    994 Words  | 2 Pages

    Grey cast iron is the most widely used foundry alloy in the world due to its wide range of achievable mechanical properties, good castability, excellent wear resistance and damping properties, high thermal conductivity as well as low cost (20-40% less than steel) (Xu et al., 2005). It is used in such diverse applications as cookware and musical instruments to auto parts and heavy machineries. Microstructure of grey cast iron is characterized by dispersion of graphite flakes in a ferrous matrix. It has been evidently shown that the size, morphology and distribution of graphite flakes greatly affect the physical and mechanical properties of grey cast irons and that these characteristics depend mainly on the chemical composition of the alloy, the foundry practice adapted such as inoculation treatment used and the cooling conditions during solidification (Bartocha et al., 2005; Xu et al., 2005;

    Read More

More about William Butler Yeats and William Blake

Open Document