Sailing to Byzantium | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 61 pages of analysis & critique of Sailing to Byzantium.

Sailing to Byzantium | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 61 pages of analysis & critique of Sailing to Byzantium.
This section contains 16,904 words
(approx. 57 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Simon O. Lesser

SOURCE: Lesser, Simon O. “‘Sailing to Byzantium’: Another Voyage, Another Reading.” In The Whispered Meanings: Selected Essays of Simon O. Lesser, edited by Robert Sprich and Richard W. Noland, pp. 128-48. Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977.

In the following essay, the author argues against the generally accepted interpretation of “Sailing to Byzantium” that the “I” of the poem considers that “engrossment in poetry is the only, but a sufficient, recompense for the privations of old age,” and against the critical approach of paying “as little attention as possible to the emotional content of literature and to our emotional responses to it.”

Art … shrinks … from every abstract thing, from all that is of the brain only, from all that is not a fountain jetting from the entire hopes, memories, and sensations of the body. Its morality is personal, knows little of any general law. …

Yeats1

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This section contains 16,904 words
(approx. 57 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Simon O. Lesser
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Critical Essay by Simon O. Lesser from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.