Making the Void Fruitful
Shedding fresh light on the life and work of William Butler Yeats—widely acclaimed as the major English-language poet of the twentieth century—this new study by leading scholar Patrick J. Keane questions established understandings of the Irish poet’s long fascination with the occult: a fixation that...
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| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
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Open Book Publishers
2022
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| Online Access: | OCN: 1292364259 |
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| _version_ | 1869514219040276480 |
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| author | Keane, Patrick J. |
| author_browse | Keane, Patrick J. |
| author_facet | Keane, Patrick J. |
| author_sort | Keane, Patrick J. |
| collection | Directory of Open Access Books |
| description | Shedding fresh light on the life and work of William Butler Yeats—widely acclaimed as the major English-language poet of the twentieth century—this new study by leading scholar Patrick J. Keane questions established understandings of the Irish poet’s long fascination with the occult: a fixation that repelled literary contemporaries T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden, but which enhanced Yeats’s vision of life and death.
Through close reading of selected poems, the first section of Making the Void Fruitful assesses Yeats’s spiritualised treatment of corporeal themes, exploring sex and eroticism as the expression of a duality inherent to his ontological and supernatural convictions. The power-producing tension in Yeats’s work is not only intellectual but emotional. At its vital centre is his Muse: the beautiful political firebrand, Maud Gonne, whose activist Republican politics he considered his one real rival. Through close engagement with the poems and plays she inspired, the second section explores Yeats’s complex relationship with Maud, an obsessive and unrequited love which he sublimated and transformed into the greatest body of Muse poetry since Petrarch, in whose tradition of spiritualized eroticism Yeats, perhaps the last of the great Romantics, was consciously writing.
Shaped by the conviction that no modern poet exceeded Yeats in animating the enduring themes of love and spirituality through poetry, this book emphasises the influence, of Blake, Nietzsche, and John Donne, on what Yeats called ‘the thinking of the body’. Grounded firmly in the textual materiality of Yeats’s oeuvre, this book will be of interest to researchers and students of W.B. Yeats, as well as to those in the fields of Anglophone literatures and cultures, and philosophy. |
| format | Online |
| id | doab-20.500.12854ir-77293 |
| institution | Directory of Open Access Books |
| language | eng |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publishDateRange | 2022 |
| publishDateSort | 2022 |
| publisher | Open Book Publishers |
| publisherStr | Open Book Publishers |
| record_format | ojs |
| spelling | doab-20.500.12854ir-772932025-07-30T11:56:19Z Making the Void Fruitful Keane, Patrick J. T. S. Eliot; Anglophone literature; Maud Gonne; Donne; William Butler Yeats; spirituality; Irish; Petrarch; Scottish; Nietzsche; W. H. Auden; eroticism; Ireland; Romantics; thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets Shedding fresh light on the life and work of William Butler Yeats—widely acclaimed as the major English-language poet of the twentieth century—this new study by leading scholar Patrick J. Keane questions established understandings of the Irish poet’s long fascination with the occult: a fixation that repelled literary contemporaries T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden, but which enhanced Yeats’s vision of life and death. Through close reading of selected poems, the first section of Making the Void Fruitful assesses Yeats’s spiritualised treatment of corporeal themes, exploring sex and eroticism as the expression of a duality inherent to his ontological and supernatural convictions. The power-producing tension in Yeats’s work is not only intellectual but emotional. At its vital centre is his Muse: the beautiful political firebrand, Maud Gonne, whose activist Republican politics he considered his one real rival. Through close engagement with the poems and plays she inspired, the second section explores Yeats’s complex relationship with Maud, an obsessive and unrequited love which he sublimated and transformed into the greatest body of Muse poetry since Petrarch, in whose tradition of spiritualized eroticism Yeats, perhaps the last of the great Romantics, was consciously writing. Shaped by the conviction that no modern poet exceeded Yeats in animating the enduring themes of love and spirituality through poetry, this book emphasises the influence, of Blake, Nietzsche, and John Donne, on what Yeats called ‘the thinking of the body’. Grounded firmly in the textual materiality of Yeats’s oeuvre, this book will be of interest to researchers and students of W.B. Yeats, as well as to those in the fields of Anglophone literatures and cultures, and philosophy. 2022-01-13T04:03:18Z 2022-01-13T04:03:18Z 2022-01-12T11:35:09Z 2021 book OCN: 1292364259 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/52359 9781800643208 9781800643215 9781800643239 9781800643246 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/77293 eng open access image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg Attribution 4.0 International Attribution 4.0 International Attribution 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/52359/1/9781800643222.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/52359/1/9781800643222.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/52359/1/9781800643222.pdf Open Book Publishers 10.11647/OBP.0275 10.11647/OBP.0275 b014b543-78bd-4c3b-bc71-b68e2ac855b9 9781800643208 9781800643215 9781800643239 9781800643246 ScholarLed 270 open access |
| spellingShingle | T. S. Eliot; Anglophone literature; Maud Gonne; Donne; William Butler Yeats; spirituality; Irish; Petrarch; Scottish; Nietzsche; W. H. Auden; eroticism; Ireland; Romantics; thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets Keane, Patrick J. Making the Void Fruitful |
| title | Making the Void Fruitful |
| title_full | Making the Void Fruitful |
| title_fullStr | Making the Void Fruitful |
| title_full_unstemmed | Making the Void Fruitful |
| title_short | Making the Void Fruitful |
| title_sort | making the void fruitful |
| topic | T. S. Eliot; Anglophone literature; Maud Gonne; Donne; William Butler Yeats; spirituality; Irish; Petrarch; Scottish; Nietzsche; W. H. Auden; eroticism; Ireland; Romantics; thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets |
| topic_facet | T. S. Eliot; Anglophone literature; Maud Gonne; Donne; William Butler Yeats; spirituality; Irish; Petrarch; Scottish; Nietzsche; W. H. Auden; eroticism; Ireland; Romantics; thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSC Literary studies: poetry and poets |
| url | OCN: 1292364259 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT keanepatrickj makingthevoidfruitful |