SOURCE: A review of The Dual Tradition: An Essay on Poetry and Politics in Ireland, in World Literature Today, Vol. 70, No. 4, Autumn, 1996, p. 967.

In the following review of The Dual Tradition, Pratt finds shortcomings in Kinsella's narrow categorization of Irish writers, notably James Joyce and W. B. Yeats.

“I am of Ireland, / And the Holy Land of Ireland, / And time runs on, cried she. / ‘Come out of charity, / Come dance with me in Ireland.’” Thus Yeats made great poetry out of an early Irish poem, better poetry than anything else Thomas Kinsella cites in his long essay [The Dual Tradition] on the Irish poetic tradition, though he translates extensively from early Irish poetry in his effort to argue that Ireland has a “dual tradition” of two languages. The case is not proved, for Yeats’s singular genius gave Ireland a poetic tradition second to none in the world...