The Lake Isle of Innisfree | Return to la bonne vaux: The Symbolic Significance of Innisfree
In the following essay, Hunter examines what
Innisfree symbolizes to Yeats as a poet.
In an attempt to explain the nature of the attraction he feels toward the Devon farm he calls Thorncombe, the protagonist of John Fowles’ Daniel Martin refers to a passage in Restif de la Bretonne’s eighteenth-century romanced autobiography, Monsieur Nicholas, in which the speaker describes the feeling of total peace and joy found in a remote, lush, hidden valley in the Burgundian hills. Fowles’ protagonist, after pointing out that the Frenchman “baptized the place simply la bonne vaux: the valley of abundance, the sacred combe,” goes on to describe the...
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