Words Alone: Yeats and his Inheritances [Paperback]

Yeats is usually seen as a great modernist innovator. This book goes against the grain to explore the Irish literary traditions that preceded and influenced him--romantic 'national tales' in post-Union Ireland, the poetry and polemic of the Young Ireland movement, the occult novels of Sheridan LeFanu, and William Carleton's 'peasant fictions'.R. F. Foster's two-volume biography of Yeats was hailed in theNew York Review of Booksas a triumph of scholarship, thought, and empathy such as one would hardly have thought possible in this age of disillusion. Now, Foster turns his focus to the largely unacknowledged influences that shaped the young W. B. Yeats.So dramatic and revolutionary was Yeats' impact on Irish literature that the writers and traditions that preceded him are often overlooked, just as his successors are often overshadowed by his achievement. InWords Alone, Foster explores the Irish literary traditions that preceded Yeats, including romantic national tales in post-Union Ireland and Scotland, the nationalist poetry and polemic of the Young Ireland movement, the occult and supernatural fictions of Sheridan LeFanu, the peasant fictions of William Carleton, and the fairy-lore and folktale collections Yeats absorbed. As well as placing these nineteenth-century literary movements in a rich contemporary context of politics, polemic, and social tension, Foster discusses recent critical and interpretive approaches to these phenomena. But the unifying theme throughout the book is the self-conscious use Yeats made of his literary predecessors during his own apprenticeship, particularly in the construction of his path-breaking early work.AcknowledgementsAcknowledgementsIntroduction1. National Tales and National Futures in Ireland and Scotland after the Union2. The First Romantics: Young Irelands between Catholic Emancipation and the Famine3. Lost in the Big House: Anglo-Irishry and the Uses of lSg