The Influence of Oscar Wilde on W.B. Yeats
The Influence of Oscar Wilde on W.B. Yeats

Author: Noreen Doody

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-08-07

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 3319895486

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book asserts that Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) was a major precursor of W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939), and shows how Wilde’s image and intellect set in train a powerful influence within Yeats’s creative imagination that remained active throughout the poet’s life. The intellectual concepts, metaphysical speculations and artistic symbols and images which Yeats appropriated from Wilde changed the poet’s perspective and informed the imaginative system of beliefs that Yeats formulated as the basis of his dramatic and poetic work. Section One, 'Influence and Identity' (1888 – 1895), explores the personal relationship of these two writers, their nationality and historical context as factors in influence. Section Two, 'Mask and Image' (1888 – 1917), traces the creative process leading to Yeats’s construction of the antithetical mask, and his ideas on image, in relation to the role of Wilde as his precursor. Finally, 'Salomé: Symbolism, Dance and Theories of Being' (1891 – 1939) concentrates on the immense influence that Wilde’s symbolist play, Salomé, wrought on Yeats’s imaginative work and creative sensibility.

Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know

Author: Colm Tóibín

Publisher: Picador Australia

Published: 2018-10-30

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1760783595

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

'A father...is a necessary evil.' Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses William Butler Yeats' father was an impoverished artist, an inveterate letter writer, and a man crippled by his inability to ever finish a painting. Oscar Wilde's father was a doctor, a brilliant statistician and amateur archaeologist who was taken to court by an obsessed lover in a strange foreshadowing of events that would later befall his son. The father of James Joyce was a garrulous, hard-drinking man with a violent temper, unable or unwilling to provide for his large family, who eventually drove his son from Ireland. In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín presents an illuminating, intimate study of Irish culture, history and literature told through the lives and works of Ireland's most famous sons, and the complicated, influential relationships they each maintained with their fathers. 'A supple, subtle thinker, alive to hunts and undertones, wary of absolute truths.' New Statesman 'Tóibín writes about writers' families...with great subtlety and sometimes with splendid impudence.' Sunday Telegraph

Yeats's Heroic Figures
Yeats's Heroic Figures

Author: Michael Steinman

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1984-06-30

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1438421109

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Heroic man and "the lies of history," the myths that surrounded them, were vital to the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. This study examines the four Anglo-Irish historical figures who dominated his life and art: Oscar Wilde, Charles Stewart Parnell, Jonathan Swift, and Roger Casement. All were creators—whether they conceived their life artistically, conceived an intellectual vision of Ireland free, or made lasting art. Their powers were matched by the magnitude of their defeat, for all, except Swift, were violently crucified by the mob for their irregular private lives. In defeat, however, they revealed transcendent heroism, as they faced their enemies with aristocratic disdain and unfailing bravery. Their constantly recreated heroic images inspired and haunted Yeats in art and politics, showed him ways to remake himself and to reconcile his devotion to art with his duty to Ireland. Yeats's Heroic Figures traces the intersections of the vivid figures in the "human drama" Yeats saw as history from 1883 to 1938, and considers their shaping forces upon Yeats's art, philosophy, and life. It is the first study to consider these four heroes together, and it brings to light much material previously neglected in comprehensive studies of Yeats.

Oscar Wilde and Contemporary Irish Drama
Oscar Wilde and Contemporary Irish Drama

Author: Graham Price

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-10-23

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 3319933450

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is about the Wildean aesthetic in contemporary Irish drama. Through elucidating a discernible Wildean strand in the plays of Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Thomas Kilroy, Marina Carr and Frank McGuinness, it demonstrates that Oscar Wilde's importance to Ireland's theatrical canon is equal to that of W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge and Samuel Beckett. The study examines key areas of the Wildean aesthetic: his aestheticizing of experience via language and self-conscious performance; the notion of the dandy in Wildean texts and how such a figure is engaged with in today's dramas; and how his contribution to the concept of a ‘verbal theatre’ has influenced his dramatic successors. It is of particular pertinence to academics and postgraduate students in the fields of Irish drama and Irish literature, and for those interested in the work of Oscar Wilde, Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Thomas Kilroy, Marina Carr and Frank McGuinness. okokpoj

Yeats and European Drama
Yeats and European Drama

Author: Michael McAteer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-08-05

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0521769116

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Michael McAteer examines the plays of W. B. Yeats, considering their place in European theatre during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This original study considers the relationship Yeats's work bore with those of the foremost dramatists of the period, drawing comparisons with Henrik Ibsen, Maurice Maeterlinck, August Strindberg, Luigi Pirandello and Ernst Toller. It also shows how his plays addressed developments in theatre at the time, with regard to the Naturalist, Symbolist, Surrealist and Expressionist movements, and how symbolism identified Yeats's ideas concerning labour, commerce and social alienation. This book is invaluable to graduates and academics studying Yeats but also provides a fascinating account for those in Irish studies and in the wider field of drama.