Byzantium Poems | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 14 pages of analysis & critique of Byzantium Poems.

Byzantium Poems | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 14 pages of analysis & critique of Byzantium Poems.
This section contains 3,971 words
(approx. 14 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Herbert J. Levine

SOURCE: “Yeats's Ruskinian Byzantium,” in Yeats Annual No. 2, edited by Richard J. Finneran, Macmillan Press, 1983, pp. 25-34.

In the following essay, Levine determines the influence of art historian John Ruskin's work on Yeats's Byzantium poems.

Reading the numerous source studies of Yeats's Byzantium poems, one sometimes gets the impression that Yeats spent his life in a vast library, poring over books and pictures, until one day when he had absorbed enough, he retired to his study and fashioned a masterpiece out of those numerous fragments. Blake's Golgonooza, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Eugenie Strong's Apotheosis and After-Life, illustrations of the Baptistry dome at Ravenna, the Byzantine decor of Stockholm's Stadshaus, all have been suggested as instrumental to the conception of Yeats's Byzantium.1 While such studies are valuable in illuminating how Yeats transplanted details from his reading and visual experiences into his completed poems, they do...

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This section contains 3,971 words
(approx. 14 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Herbert J. Levine
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Critical Essay by Herbert J. Levine from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.