While the Joyce essays represent the truly international scope of any "contextualization" of Joyce by including work from scholars based in a full range of countries,
W. B. Yeats in Context has a distinctly Anglo-American feel.
In the twentieth century, the writers whose verse looks likely to remain compelling may be fewer than many academics imagine; but by almost any reckoning their number includes centrally
W. B. Yeats. Like most authors whose work presents numerous difficulties of interpretation, Yeats has generated a scholarly literature that is strongly exegetic in character, and the biographical and contextual scholarship on the poet supports an effort of understanding that his complex and often esoteric body of writings requires.
Flannery's International
W. B. Yeats Theatre Festival in Dublin.
And yet, in his 1958 landmark treatment of the play in
W. B. Yeats and Tradition, F.
by Shri Purohit Swami and
W. B. Yeats. New York: Collier, 1975.
Despite the popularity of James Joyce (1882-1941), and the contrary fame of Samuel Beckett (1906-89), few would dispute that
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) remains unchallenged as the dominant figure in Irish culture of the twentieth century and after.
The final new title is John Kelly's A
W. B. Yeats Chronology whose aim is 'to trace and register' Yeats' 'multiple interests' and 'to show how they were pursued simultaneously, and how apparently disparate activities impacted on each other to produce a rich, energetic and ultimately coherent canon.' The chronology is based on the thousands of letters to and from Yeats as well as published material.
The same concern arises again, now that Foster's biography of
W. B. Yeats is complete.
There is a museum of long-standing dedicated to his brother, the poet
W. B. Yeats, in Sligo.
The figure of Cathleen ni Houlihan as an Old Woman representing Ireland now seems familiar, virtually a national revolutionary icon, for better or for worse; (1) however, the figure was effectively invented in the play
W. B. Yeats and Augusta Gregory wrote in 1901, Cathleen ni Houlihan.
Informative, beautifully designed, and dearly written, The Apprentice Mage whets the appetite for volume two of
W. B. Yeats: A Life.
5 William Butler Yeats, 'Parnell's Funeral' (1934), in The Collected Poems of
W. B. Yeats (London: Pan Books/ MacMillan, 1990), 319-20.
W. B. Yeats - Irish poet and dramatist (1865-1939)