Yeats and the Widening Gyres

William Butler Yeats straddled the 19th and 20th centuries, responding to the gestalt of each. Growing into the 20th, he became more than the lyric poet who exalted Irish nationalism in the 19th, more than the witness to the struggle to free Ireland from “the cruel cross of England’s thralldom.” His poetry changed. While never abandoning rhyme and meter, he absorbed the new poetic attitudes and spoke his anxious thoughts to the world.  This course will study nine Yeats poems. Three come from his early lyricism, the final six from his modern, often oracular, compositions.The class will also look at one poem by Seamus Heaney that, in itself, is a masterful homage to Yeats.

Links to class poems as well as other resources will be provided.

Over the years, Leona Dufour has taught several courses at MSC, the last being one on Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.