W.B. Yeats and the Muses explores how nine fascinating women inspired much of W.B. Yeats's poetry. These women are particularly important because Yeats perceived them in terms of beliefs about poetic inspiration akin to the Greek notion that a great poet is inspired and possessed by the feminine voices of the Muses. Influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite idea of woman as 'romantic and mysterious, still the priestess of her shrine', Yeats found his Muses in living women. His extraordinarily long and fruitful poetic career was fuelled by passionate relationships with women to and about whom he wrote some of his most compelling poetry. The book summarizes the different Muse traditions that were congenial to Yeats and shows how his perception of these women as Muses underlies his poetry. Newly available letters and manuscripts are used to explore the creative process and interpret the poems. Because Yeats believed that lyric poetry 'is no rootless flower, but the speech of a man,' exploring the relationship between poem and Muse brings new coherence to the poetry, illuminates the process of its creation, and unlocks the 'second beauty' to which Yeats referred when he claimed that 'works of lyric genius, when the circumstances of their origin is known, gain a second a beauty, passing as it were out of literature and becoming life.' As life emerges from the literature, the Muses are shown to be vibrant, multi-faceted personalities who shatter the idea of the Muse as a passive stereotype and take their proper place as begetters of timeless poetry.
Reviews
Review from previous edition Joseph M. Hassett's Yeats and the Muses provides a truly absorbing biographical guide to the powerful women in Yeatss life and their influence on the major phases of his career. * Maria Johnston, Years Work in English Studies *
Joseph M. Hassett's book W.B. Yeats and the Muses must duly be commended for its exquisite execution of combining textual criticism with biographical context and fact. Every chapter utilises the biographical conditions in which the poems were created to good effect. * Graham Dampier, Irish Studies Review *
Even to the sophisticated reader of Yeats, these explorations of Yeats's personal life and the symbiosis of his Muses confirm 'a second beauty' and 'new coherence' to Yeats's poems. These insights are the result of Joseph M. Hassett's able scholarship.' * Michael D. Langan, Studies Irish Review *
a brilliant and magisterial work... a work of great intellectual and human significance that will stand the test of time * James Flannery, Irish America *
elegant study of Yeats and his muses * Maureen Murphy, Irish Literary Supplement *
Newly available letters and manuscripts provide a fascinating context * The Buzz Board *
A subtle, suggestive study of inspiration, based on penetrating readings of the poems and a close exploration of the texture of the poet's biography; it weaves life, love and work together in a quintessentially Yeatsian manner, full of insight. * Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History, Hertford College, Oxford *
Hassett's elegant book manages to give a summary and compelling account of the extraordinary sequence of distinguished women that Yeats was inspired by throughout his life, tracing fully all the eccentricities of those connections. This is one of those books which leaves you marveling that the world left room for it to be written: a delight from start to finish. * Bernard O'Donoghue, Fellow in English, Wadham College, Oxford *
deeply informed and fascinating book * Michael Dirda, Weekly Standard *
It's hard to imagine the poems being read in the future without reference to Hassett's extended insights into one of the most fruitful and provoking zones in all of Yeats's work. * Eamon Grennan (Emeritus Professor of English, Vassar College) *
Joseph Hassett's beautifully written study follows a strong yet subtle argument through widely researched and scrupulously detailed individual chapters. The Yeats who emerges from it is clearly driven by the needs of his work as a poet; to that end all others are subservient. * Anthony Roche, Dublin Review of Books *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198746027
Author Joseph M. Hassett
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 15mm