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
The Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was perhaps the greatest poet of the 20th century. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923 and was the leader of the Irish Literary ...
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
Although the reputation of William Butler Yeats rests primarily on his poetry, the drama remained one of the central concerns throughout his long career. As he explained in 1917, "I need a theatre; ...
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 was born into an Irish-Protestant family on 13 June 1865, in Dublin, the oldest of the four children of the artist John Butler Yeats and Susan Pollexfen Yeats. While he was a youn...
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 life b...
Read more
In the following essay, Dume considers the origin of the tree and birds in “Sailing to Byzantium.”
In William Butler Yeats' Byzantium poems, the imagery of the golden tree and the...
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, Roppen and Sommer explore the defining themes of “Sailing to Byzantium” and “Byzantium,” contending that the poems “work out a myth of spirit...
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 the ...
Read more
In the following essay, Lesser rejects earlier interpretations of “Sailing to Byzantium,” instead viewing it as a sad poem written by an old man dreading his imminent death.
I
“Sa...
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. Yea...
Read more
In the following excerpt, Winters criticizes selections from The Collected Poems, finding fault with many aspects of them including Yeats's philosophy, his use of symbolism, his elevated style,...
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, Perloff provides explications of structure, semantics, and sound and uses biographical information about Yeats's feelings for Maud Gonne during the last two decades of...
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, Pacey discusses the evolution of Yeats's allusions to children from those of a Romantic modified by touches of "irony" and "humour" to thos...
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, O'Neill suggests that Yeats's poetical interpretation of political events evolved from bitterness to acceptance as Yeats tried to impose order on chaos by apply...
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
This essay, which first appeared in The Dome in 1900, presents Yeats's views on symbolic poetry. In the excerpt which follows, Yeats discusses the emotional and intellectual associations of sym...
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, so f...
Read more
In the following review, the critic praises Yeats's masterful use of sound and suggests that Yeats emphasizes both ephemeral and malignant themes in The Wild Swans at Coole.
Mr. Yeats is like a...
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, in h...
Read more
In the following excerpt, MacNeice remarks on the resilience of the aging Yeats's poetic voice and observes that the poet's native Ireland features prominently in the works collected in ...
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 from an overview of Yeats's work, Wildi asserts that Yeats's poetic influence was reciprocal: even as he helped such writers as Arthur Symons, Thomas Sturge Moor...
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.
One...
Read more
Imagine a world where streets are raided with fire, store alarms are turned off, people are behaving in an improper way, girls are loosing their identity, and other ominous prophecies are activated...
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
W.B. Yeats, a key figure of the modernist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was born in Dublin in 1865. Although spending much of his childhood and youth in London, Yeats ...
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
A person who is stated as `ideal' is close to, if not, perfect. It is in the laws of human nature that every other man would wish to portray himself or herself a...
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