Running to Paradise: Yeats's Poetic ArtOxford University Press, 1997 M04 24 - 384 pages In Running to Paradise, M.L. Rosenthal, hailed by the Times Literary Supplement as "one of the most important critics of twentieth-century poetry," leads us through the lyric poetry and poetic drama of our century's greatest poet in English. His readings shed new, vivid light on Yeats's daring uses of tradition, his love poetry, and the way he faced the often tragic realities of revolution and civil war. Running to Paradise describes Yeats's whole effort--sometimes leavened by wild humor--to convey, with high poetic integrity, his passionate sense of his own life and of his chaotic era. Himself a noted poet, Rosenthal stresses Yeats's artistry and psychological candor. The book ranges from his early exquisite lyrical poems and folklore-rooted plays, through the tougher-minded, more confessional mature work (including the sublime achievement of The Tower), and then to the sometimes "mad" yet often brilliant tragic or comic writing of his last years. Quoting extensively from Yeats, Rosenthal charts the gathering force with which the poet confronted his major life-issues: his art's demands, his persistent but hopeless love for one woman, the complexities of marriage to another woman at age 52, and his distress during Ireland's "Troubles." Yeats's deep absorption in female sensibility, in the cycles of history and human thought, and in supernaturalism and "the dead" comes strongly into play as well. |
Contents
3 | |
Early Drama with Some Glances Ahead | 35 |
Poetry of Transition I 19101914 | 80 |
Drama of Transition and the Cuchulain Cycle | 120 |
Poetry of Transition II 19141919 | 171 |
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Abbey Theatre Adam's Curse Aleel Baile's Strand beauty beggar begins Ben Bulben Blind blood called Cathleen character closing Congal context Countess Cathleen Crazy Jane dance dancers dead Death of Cuchulain despite dialogue dramatic dream earlier Easter Rising echo Edain elegiac Emer emotional eyes feeling final gone Green Helmet Hawk's head heart human imagination instance Ireland Irish King Lady Gregory Last Poems later living lovers lyrical Maud Gonne Memory Michael Robartes mind moon motif Musicians mystical Naoise night Nineteen Oedipus once passage passion phrasing pieces play play's poem poem's poet poet's poetic poetry political refrain rhyming romantic Running to Paradise scene Seanchan seems sense sequence Seven Woods sexual sing song soul spirit stanza supernatural Swans at Coole Swift symbolic things thought tion tone Tower tragic turn verse verse-unit vision volume W. B. Yeats whole wind woman women words Yeats Yeats's young