The Critical Thought Of W. B. Yeats
by Wit Pietrzak /
2017 / English / PDF
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This book focuses on W. B. Yeats’s critical writings, an aspect
of his oeuvre which has been given limited treatment so far. It
traces his critical work from his earliest articles, through to
his occult treatises, and all the way to his last pamphlets, in
which he sought to delineate the idea of a literary culture: a
community of people willing to credit poetry with the central
role in imagining and organising social praxis throughout
society. The chapters of this study investigate the contexts in
which Yeats’s thought developed, his many disputes over the
shape of Irish cultural politics, the future of poetry and the
place literature occupies in the world. What transpires is an
image of Yeats who is strung between the impulses of faith in
the existence of a supernatural order and ironic scepticism as
to the possibility of ever capturing that order in
language.
This book focuses on W. B. Yeats’s critical writings, an aspect
of his oeuvre which has been given limited treatment so far. It
traces his critical work from his earliest articles, through to
his occult treatises, and all the way to his last pamphlets, in
which he sought to delineate the idea of a literary culture: a
community of people willing to credit poetry with the central
role in imagining and organising social praxis throughout
society. The chapters of this study investigate the contexts in
which Yeats’s thought developed, his many disputes over the
shape of Irish cultural politics, the future of poetry and the
place literature occupies in the world. What transpires is an
image of Yeats who is strung between the impulses of faith in
the existence of a supernatural order and ironic scepticism as
to the possibility of ever capturing that order in
language.
This study is distinguished by its grounding of Yeats's critical
agenda in a broader context through textual analysis. In
addition, it organises and systematises his conceptions of poetry
and its social role through its approach to his criticism as a
fully-fledged area of his artistic practice.
This study is distinguished by its grounding of Yeats's critical
agenda in a broader context through textual analysis. In
addition, it organises and systematises his conceptions of poetry
and its social role through its approach to his criticism as a
fully-fledged area of his artistic practice.