William Butler Yeats Summary

Biography EssayWilliam Butler Yeats, probably the twentieth century's greatest poet in English and certainly one of its most complex men, was born in the Dublin suburb of Sandymount on 13 June 1865. H... Read more

William Butler Yeats is widely acknowledged as the greatest poet of the twentieth century. He belonged to the Protestant, Anglo-Irish minority that had controlled the economic, political, social, and ... Read more

William Butler Yeats , probably the twentieth century's greatest poet in English and certainly one of its most complex men, was born in the Dublin suburb of Sandymount on 13 June 1865. He was the elde... Read more

William Butler Yeats , who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, is widely regarded as the best poet to write in English during the twentieth century. Yet from 1887 to 1905, the first third of h... Read more

In the following essay, Jeffares surveys possible influences on Yeats and “Sailing to Byzantium.” In his notes to Collected Poems1 Yeats wrote that he had warmed himself back into lif... Read more

In the following essay, Campbell interprets Yeats's vision of Byzantium as an “unorthodox but devoutly religious version of the New Jerusalem.” The numerous analyses of Yeats&#... Read more

In the following essay, Fréchet assesses the influence of Keats's “Ode to a Nightingale” on “Sailing to Byzantium.” The dissatisfaction with the world of t... Read more

Johnson, an English poet of Irish descent, was a friend of Yeats. In the following excerpt, Johnson praises Yeats for his use of Celtic themes and his ability to seize his readers emotionally. Mr. ... Read more

In the following excerpt, Stock concentrates on Yeats's concern for Ireland and his involvement with magic, tracing the presence of both in his poetry throughout his career by focusing on a sel... Read more

In the following excerpt, Oates asserts that the violent events and "farfetched and grotesque" images of Yeats's work are a result of his view of life as a dynamic chaos that need... Read more

In the following excerpt, Byrd interprets animal and plant imagery as important aspects of Yeats's poetry, suggesting that such images authenticate the "poetic dream" of art... Read more

In the following excerpt, Cullingford examines Yeats's personality and his love poetry, suggesting that Yeats possessed feminine qualities which enabled him to write untraditional poems in prai... Read more

In the following excerpt, Archer notes that Yeats's early Celtic themes were an outgrowth of his personality and beliefs and not affectations of a current style. It is with Mr. Yeats that, s... Read more

In the following excerpt, Yeats discusses the nature of his poetry and the influences of Celtic legend, his Irish heritage, and other poets on his work. A poet writes always of his personal life, i... Read more

In the following review, Stauffer praises The Collected Poems and briefly summarizes Yeats's poetic career, observing that in his poems, Yeats champions the integrity of the individual against ... Read more

In the following excerpt, Raines examines Yeats's later poems and arques that they contain metaphors which represent order amid chaos and which consequently unify Yeats's later work. ... Read more

I like Yeats poetry. Yeats had a hard life and at times a sad life. His relationships with women appear not to have been much better. In the poems we have studied the reader encounters all of the abo... Read more

Several of Yeats' poems equate the loss of youth or aging with a loss of purpose and meaning. The thought of aging is frightening for him and he does not want to waste time idly. One reason for this... Read more

Essay on William Butler Yeats William Butler Yeats was born in 1865 to a Sligo family. Yeats' childhood was spent toing and froing between England and Ireland. Yeats lived and wrote through a period ... Read more