Byzantium Poems | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 13 pages of analysis & critique of Byzantium Poems.

Byzantium Poems | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 13 pages of analysis & critique of Byzantium Poems.
This section contains 3,316 words
(approx. 12 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Virginia Pruitt

SOURCE: “Return from Byzantium: W. B. Yeats and ‘The Tower’,” in ELH: English Literary History, Vol. 47, No. 1, Spring, 1980, pp. 149-57.

In the following essay, Pruitt contends that “Sailing to Byzantium” and “The Tower” not only discuss the issue of aging, but asserts that each poem is “part of a process, that they are complements.”

A remarkable level of creative activity characterized Yeats's final decades. Indeed, T. R. Henn has suggested that there exists “no precedent in literary history for a poet who produces his greatest work between the ages of 50 and 75.”1 What was the reason for Yeats's anomalous achievement? A clue to the enigma may lie in his concurrent cultivation of aesthetic sophistication and instinctive drives. Because the youthful Yeats was confident of his intellectual superiority, but felt out of touch with his instinctive drives, his effort to develop those drives was the pursuit of a lifetime. The...

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This section contains 3,316 words
(approx. 12 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Virginia Pruitt
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Critical Essay by Virginia Pruitt from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.