Joseph M. Hassett

W.B. Yeats and the Muses (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

W.B. Yeats and the Muses explores how nine fascinating women inspired much of W.B. Yeats's poetry. These women are particularly important because Yeats perceived them in terms of beliefs about poetic inspiration akin to the Greek notion that a great poet is inspired and possessed by the feminine voices of the Muses. Influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite idea of woman as 'romantic and mysterious, still the priestess of her shrine', Yeats found his Muses in living women. His extraordinarily long and fruitful poetic career was fuelled by passionate relationships with women to and about whom he wrote some of his most compelling poetry. The book summarizes the different Muse traditions that were congenial to Yeats and shows how his perception of these women as Muses underlies his poetry. Newly available letters and manuscripts are used to explore the creative process and interpret the poems. Because Yeats believed that lyric poetry 'is no rootless flower, but the speech of a man,' exploring the relationship between poem and Muse brings new coherence to the poetry, illuminates the process of its creation, and unlocks the 'second beauty' to which Yeats referred when he claimed that 'works of lyric genius, when the circumstances of their origin is known, gain a second a beauty, passing as it were out of literature and becoming life.' As life emerges from the literature, the Muses are shown to be vibrant, multi-faceted personalities who shatter the idea of the Muse as a passive stereotype and take their proper place as begetters of timeless poetry.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• Erscheinungstermin: 22. Juli 2010
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780191614897
• Artikelnr.: 38131093

Autorenporträt

Joseph M. Hassett is a graduate of Harvard Law School and holds a doctorate in Anglo-Irish Literature from University College Dublin. He has written and lectured extensively on Yeats and other Irish writers. He lives and practices law in Washington, DC. He and his wife, Carol Melton, have two children, Matthew and Meredith.

Inhaltsangabe

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Manuscript Material Abbreviations
Introduction
I: White Woman That Passion Has Worn: Olivia Shakespear
II: Where the Blessed Dance: Florence Farr
III: The Apple on the Bough Most Out of Reach: Maud Gonne
IV: The Living Beauty: Iseult Gonne
V: Out of a Medium's Mouth: George Hyde-Lees
VI: In Search of the Muse: Memories of Love and Lyrics for Imaginary People
VII: A Foolish, Passionate Man: Margot Ruddock and Ethel Mannin
VIII: Fury: Dorothy Wellesle
IX: Golden Codger and Siren: Yeats and Edith Shackleton Heald
Finale
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index