W.B. Yeats

W. B. Yeats: A Poetics of Ideology investigates the §articulations of ideology in Yeats from the §beginning of his poetic career. The book seeks to §contextualize this ideology within what I call the §modernist predicament. Yeats s articulation of §politics can be divided into three major phases. The §first focuses on his juvenilia, where politics §is articulated in the pastoral trope at the §unconscious level of the text. The second is §explicitly expressed in Yeats s imaginative §nationalism. Here Ireland is painted as a utopian §land, an extension of his early §pastoral world. In such an idyllic depiction of the §nation traumatic events like the Great Hunger are §glossed over. The third phase grounds Yeats in the §modernist predicament. Here the poet s consciousness §of the discrepancy between aesthetics §and praxis, poetry and modernity, is paramount to §our understanding of the Yeatsian crisis. The §crisis articulates itself in Yeats s politicization §of space and claustrophilia. The book aims to trace §the development or, better still, radicalization of §Yeats s political thought, especially with regard to §modernity and the Enlightenment.