W.B. Yeats Images, Echoes and Aesthetics

William Butler Yeats is regarded as the most important Irish poet and as one of the major poets of the twentieth century poetry in English. But readers and researchers often complain that the books on Yeats criticism tend to deal with a particular phase or a particular aspect of his poetic art and therefore the idea of comprehensive study of his poetic art remains but a mirage. The present book WB. Yeats: images, Echoes and Aesthetics endeavours therefore to explicate Yeats's aesthetics by studying in detail all major aspects of his personality, poetry and plays. A sincere attampt is made in the book to study Ireland, Irish myths, nationalism, romanticism, realism, magic, automatic writing, symbolism, occultism, Hinduism, Jainism, and modernism in the light of Yeats's poetry. Almost fifty years of his creative writing clearly reveal the fact that poetry writing for Yeats has been a process of innovations, transformations and alterations. The book therefore attempts to closely study changes in his themes, styles and techniques of poetry that have taken place over the years of his long career as a poet. The book also studies in detail Yeats's important poems like The Songs of the Happy Shepherd, The Sad Shepherd, The Madness of King Goll, The Stolen Child, To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time, Cucbulians Flight with the Sea, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Song of Wandering Aengus, September 1913, The Magi, The Dolls, Cat and Moon, Easter 1916, The Second Coming, On a Political Prisoner, Sailing to Byzantium, Byzantium, The Wheel, Leda and the Swan, Among School Children, All Soul's Night, Meru, The Gyres, Lapis Lazuli, The Sweet Dancer, An Acre of Grass, The Spur, Long L.egged Fiy, Politics and under Ben Bulben. An attempt is also made to study Yeat's major plays like The Countess Cathleen, The Land of Hearts Desire, Cathleen Ni Hoodiban, At the Hawk's Well, A Fool Moon in March and The Death of Cuchulain. It is hoped that the book will be of great help to students and research scholars of English Poetry.