What Made Yeats A Poet

CONTRIBUTION

Writer, dramatist, founder of the Abbey Theatre, the greatest modern poet writing in

English

A towering figure in Irish literature, William Butler Yeats' long and influential career spanned a time of enormous political change. A visionary poet of huge imagination and technical virtuosity,

Poet of love, lore and land

maintained his cultural roots, featuring Irish legends and heroes in many of his poems and plays.

Influences

Sligo ,a country side

 John O'Leary

a famous patriot

Maud Gonne

first met the love of his life, Maud Gonne, in 1889. For him she symbolized the spirit of tragic beauty and Irish nationalism. the inspiration for his love poetry, who he described as "the troubling of my life"

interest in Irish myth and his commitment to the cause of Irish national identity

Collected Works in Verse and Prose

"When I first wrote I went here and there for my subjects as my reading led me, and preferred to all other countries Arcadia and the India of romance, but presently I convinced myself ... that I should never go for the scenery of a poem to any country but my own, and I think that I shall hold to that conviction to the end." 

“Last romantic”.

Irish mythology

Traditional Greek and roman mythology with Irish folk lore

Juxta position of past and present

Theory of Masks

Obscurity due to mysticism

-----------------------, unlesssoul claps its hand and sing,Sailing to Byzantine

Pessimistic note

YOU HAD ENOUGH OF SORROW BEFORE DEATH-

AWAY ,AWAY; YOU ARE SAFER IN THE TOMBTo A Shade

Symbolism

Chaos in Christianity

Humanism

HE HAD DONE MOST BITTER WRONGTO SOME WHO ARE NEAR MY HEART

Easter 1916

Anti war.

THINGS FALL APART;THE ENTIRE CANNOT HOLD

THE BEST LACK ALL THE CONVICTIONS, WHILE THE WORST

The second coming

Disillusioned thoughts

WHAT IS IT BUT NIGHT FALL?

Easter 1916

Magic

god and faries of Celtic mythology

themes

Related approaches

Time Nature Binary opposites Relation between art and politics The Impact of Fate and the Divine on

History The Transition from Romanticism to

Modernism Destruction Unrequited Lust

Major symbols

The gyre The Swan The Great Beast Fishing The Moon

accuse him of elitism

. He belonged to the Protestant, Anglo-Irish minority that had controlled the economic, political, social, and cultural life of Ireland since at least the end of the seventeenth century. .adhering to his self-image as an artist

"Yeats as an Example,"

“some of the most beautiful poetry” W H AUDEN 

 Seamus Heaney

“ he bothers you with the suggestion that if you have managed to do one kind of poem in your own way, you should cast off that way and face into another area of your experience until you have learned a new voice to say that area properly”

 Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978, 

BOTH ROMANTIC AND MODERN SO TALKS OF

BALANCEO body swayed to music, o

brightening glanceHow can we know the dancer from

the dance?

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams