Yeats, William Butler
Yeats, William Butler (1865–1939),Irish poet and playwright, ‘the voice of Irish cultural consciousness coming to maturity’ (Roy Foster). The most obvious immediate influences on Yeats's poetry are Blake, Maeterlinck, and the French symbolists; and on his plays the Noh tradition of Japan. But his attempt, with Lady Gregory and others, to establish an Irish Literary (later National) Theatre in Dublin, 1899, with Irish plays on Irish subjects, seems to reproduce something of Shakespeare's patriotic creation of a similar English national identity through the use of native history, legend, and folklore. Yeats's painter father read to him from boyhood, including Shakespeare, and he learned ‘to set certain passages in Shakespeare above all else in literature’. In his own essays on a literature beyond realism (a literature of symbolism, myth, and allegory), Yeats frequently takes Shakespeare as illustration and touchstone, as in ‘At...
[The entire page is 248 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
