Summary:
Essay analyzes how the poetry of W.B. Yeats exemplifies a successful and suggestive fusion of ancient and modern elements.
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 is seen as an inherently Irish literary figure. Through his early work, employing not only ancient Greek myth, but also Celtic legend, he sought to re-ignite in Ireland notions of heritage and tradition, which had diminished through the years. In Ireland, from around 1890 onwards, there was a very noticeable return to all things Irish, including a re-introduction of the Gaelic language, through the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, and the formation of a highly nationalist community in Ireland. Alongside these practical returns to Celtic origins, ."..there was a feeling that myth, folklore, a past, was a moral purgative.".....
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