Yeats The Initiate

The eminent poet and scholar Kathleen Raine, leading exponent of "the learning of the imagination," brings together all her essays on Yeats (some never before printed) covering many aspects of the traditions and influences that informed his great poetry. In saluting Raine's "magnificent achievement in this rich and learned book," Professor Augustine Martin of University College Dublin states that she "irradiates [Yeats] and every corner of his work. Her unique and unanswerable contribution to Yeatsian criticism is to establish his authority as an immensely learned poet and thinker in the tradition of Plato and the Eternal Philosophy." Contains over 140 illustrations.

The essays in Yeats Annual No 7 are dedicated to the memory of Richard Ellmann, one of the great pioneer critics of W.B.Yeats. They have been contributed by distinguished colleagues and friends of Richard Ellmann, chosen on his advice. The volume also contains much new material by Yeats himself - a new and virtually complete early draft of his novel The Speckled Bird, here entitled 'The Lilies of the Lord' and two new poems from The Flame of the Spirit manuscript book, given to Maud Gonne in 1981.

Includes a special section on teaching Yeats

W. B. Yeats's "A Vision": Explications and Contexts' is the first volume of essays devoted to 'A Vision' and the associated system developed by W. B. Yeats and his wife, George. 'A Vision' is all-encompassing in its stated aims and scope, and it invites a wide range of approaches-asdemonstrated in the essays collected here, written by the foremost scholars in the field.The first six essays present explications of broader themes in 'A Vision' itself: the system's general principles; incarnate life and the Faculties; discarnate life and the Principles; how Yeats relates his own work to other philosophical approaches; and his consideration of the historical process.A further three essays include an examination of the elusive 'Thirteenth Cone', a consideration of astrological features in the automatic script, and a view of the poetry within 'A Vision'. The final five essays look at contextual themes, whether of collaboration and influence-between husband, wife,and spirits, or with another poet-or the gender perspective within these interrelations, the historical context of Golden-Dawn occultism or the broader political context of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. Throughout, the different contributors take a variety of stances with regard to texts and theautomatic script.This is an important contribution to Yeats scholarship in general and a landmark in studies of 'A Vision'.

"Attempts to balance traditional and modern criticism of Yeats by linking formalism and philosophy in the context of Yeats' work and evaluates its credibility in Yeats's practice in relation to other theoretical discourses and in the context of the turbulent cultural and historical circumstances under which Yeats worked"--Provided by publisher.

Yeats Annual No.8 has two distinct themes: Yeats's poetic technique and his aims for an Irish Theatre. Essays from Helen Vendler, Richard Taylor, Timothy Armstrong and Wayne Chapman place the poetry under close scrutiny and offer challenging new studies. Yeats himself writes the remaining essays, including the long-awaited first publication of his Wildean dialogue and an uncollected address on the Irish National Theatre delivered in 1934. Richard Londraville edits four of Yeats's lectures given in England and America in 1902-4.

This book is the first to make extensive use of unpublished manuscripts to show how a period of English literature affected W.B.Yeats's development as a poet. Besides presenting a factual account of his acquaintance with English Renaissance writers based on evidence from his library and elsewhere, the study examines his response to numerous minor figures and several major ones - including Spenser, Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne and Milton.