Neil Mann, Matthew Gibson, and Claire Nally (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780983533924
- eISBN:
- 9781781382219
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780983533924.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
W. B. Yeats’s “A Vision”: Explications and Contexts is the first volume of essays dedicated to A Vision and the associated system developed by William Butler Yeats and his wife, George Yeats. A ...
More
W. B. Yeats’s “A Vision”: Explications and Contexts is the first volume of essays dedicated to A Vision and the associated system developed by William Butler Yeats and his wife, George Yeats. A Vision is all-encompassing in its stated aims and scope, covering the nature of reality, the spiritual constitution of the human being, human life and afterlife, and the great trends and cycles of history. It invites a wide range of approaches, as demonstrated in the fourteen essays collected here, written by the foremost scholars in the field. After a preface outlining critical treatment of A Vision and Yeats’s occult interests over the years, the first six essays present explications of major themes in A Vision itself: the system’s underlying structure; incarnate life and the Faculties; discarnate life and the Principles; how Yeats relates the ideas to other concepts in philosophy; and his consideration of the historical process. Three further essays look at key elements of importance to the work: the divine and the Thirteenth Cone; astrology in the automatic script; and poetry within A Vision. The final five consider its context, in terms of collaboration and influence—between husband, wife, and spirits, or with another poet—or the gender perspective within these interrelations, the historical context of Golden Dawn occultism or the broader political context of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. Illustrated with over thirty figures and diagrams, the book has a full glossary of the Yeatses’ idiosyncratic terminology and an index.Less
W. B. Yeats’s “A Vision”: Explications and Contexts is the first volume of essays dedicated to A Vision and the associated system developed by William Butler Yeats and his wife, George Yeats. A Vision is all-encompassing in its stated aims and scope, covering the nature of reality, the spiritual constitution of the human being, human life and afterlife, and the great trends and cycles of history. It invites a wide range of approaches, as demonstrated in the fourteen essays collected here, written by the foremost scholars in the field. After a preface outlining critical treatment of A Vision and Yeats’s occult interests over the years, the first six essays present explications of major themes in A Vision itself: the system’s underlying structure; incarnate life and the Faculties; discarnate life and the Principles; how Yeats relates the ideas to other concepts in philosophy; and his consideration of the historical process. Three further essays look at key elements of importance to the work: the divine and the Thirteenth Cone; astrology in the automatic script; and poetry within A Vision. The final five consider its context, in terms of collaboration and influence—between husband, wife, and spirits, or with another poet—or the gender perspective within these interrelations, the historical context of Golden Dawn occultism or the broader political context of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. Illustrated with over thirty figures and diagrams, the book has a full glossary of the Yeatses’ idiosyncratic terminology and an index.
Margaret Mills Harper
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780983533924
- eISBN:
- 9781781382219
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780983533924.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This essay outlines the collaboration of George Yeats and W. B. Yeats in the creation of the automatic script and the system that grew out of it, published as A Vision. It considers her role and ...
More
This essay outlines the collaboration of George Yeats and W. B. Yeats in the creation of the automatic script and the system that grew out of it, published as A Vision. It considers her role and importance, the nature of her mediumship, and of the spirit “communicators,” using both the Yeatses’ own terms of reference and more generally accepted ones. After an examination of the differences in emphasis and immediacy of expression in the two versions of A Vision, the essay looks at the development of A Vision from the first to second version in the light of the relationship between Yeats’s “Leo Africanus” letters and Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1917), and how these works in turn look forward to A Vision. Throughout, it highlights key questions of expression, voice, and authenticity, of authority and authorship, of invention and discovery.Less
This essay outlines the collaboration of George Yeats and W. B. Yeats in the creation of the automatic script and the system that grew out of it, published as A Vision. It considers her role and importance, the nature of her mediumship, and of the spirit “communicators,” using both the Yeatses’ own terms of reference and more generally accepted ones. After an examination of the differences in emphasis and immediacy of expression in the two versions of A Vision, the essay looks at the development of A Vision from the first to second version in the light of the relationship between Yeats’s “Leo Africanus” letters and Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1917), and how these works in turn look forward to A Vision. Throughout, it highlights key questions of expression, voice, and authenticity, of authority and authorship, of invention and discovery.
Matthew Campbell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748681327
- eISBN:
- 9781474422239
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748681327.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
Much scholarship has been devoted to the extraordinary experience of W.B. Yeats and his wife George on their honeymoon, when she acted as medium for the writing dictated by the spirits who came, they ...
More
Much scholarship has been devoted to the extraordinary experience of W.B. Yeats and his wife George on their honeymoon, when she acted as medium for the writing dictated by the spirits who came, they told Yeats, ‘to give you metaphors for poetry.’ Much has been made of Yeats’s adoption of the revealed symbolic system as it emerged into his subsequent poetry. And much has also been said about the sexual politics of the relationship between Yeats and George and the other women in his life, like Maud Gonne or Lady Gregory and their various functions from muse to patron. This chapter thinks again about these writers as correspondents with the poetry, as historical persons, amatory fantasies, spiritual personae and psychic practitioners. It focuses on George, though, and gives another version of Yeats the collaborator, the poet of correspondences: ‘Where got I that truth?’, the two-part lyric ‘Fragments’ asks: ‘Out of a medium’s mouth’ is the answer.Less
Much scholarship has been devoted to the extraordinary experience of W.B. Yeats and his wife George on their honeymoon, when she acted as medium for the writing dictated by the spirits who came, they told Yeats, ‘to give you metaphors for poetry.’ Much has been made of Yeats’s adoption of the revealed symbolic system as it emerged into his subsequent poetry. And much has also been said about the sexual politics of the relationship between Yeats and George and the other women in his life, like Maud Gonne or Lady Gregory and their various functions from muse to patron. This chapter thinks again about these writers as correspondents with the poetry, as historical persons, amatory fantasies, spiritual personae and psychic practitioners. It focuses on George, though, and gives another version of Yeats the collaborator, the poet of correspondences: ‘Where got I that truth?’, the two-part lyric ‘Fragments’ asks: ‘Out of a medium’s mouth’ is the answer.
Charles I. Armstrong
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780983533924
- eISBN:
- 9781781382219
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780983533924.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This essay inspects W. B. Yeats’s use of classical philosophy in A Vision, paying close attention to when and how Yeats turned to Pre-Socratic philosophers such as Plato, Empedocles, and Heraclitus ...
More
This essay inspects W. B. Yeats’s use of classical philosophy in A Vision, paying close attention to when and how Yeats turned to Pre-Socratic philosophers such as Plato, Empedocles, and Heraclitus in order to articulate the system that was handed to him via the automatic writing of his wife, George Yeats. Special attention is given to how the increased use of philosophy in the second edition of A Vision answers a variety of needs, including not only the providing of clarification and inspiration but also the legitimization of Yeats’s idiosyncratic system. Yeats’s use classical philosophy is also looked at in terms of what literary genres it brings into play, and how it relates to Victorian Hellenism and an Irish nationalist context.Less
This essay inspects W. B. Yeats’s use of classical philosophy in A Vision, paying close attention to when and how Yeats turned to Pre-Socratic philosophers such as Plato, Empedocles, and Heraclitus in order to articulate the system that was handed to him via the automatic writing of his wife, George Yeats. Special attention is given to how the increased use of philosophy in the second edition of A Vision answers a variety of needs, including not only the providing of clarification and inspiration but also the legitimization of Yeats’s idiosyncratic system. Yeats’s use classical philosophy is also looked at in terms of what literary genres it brings into play, and how it relates to Victorian Hellenism and an Irish nationalist context.
