Running to Paradise: Yeats's Poetic Art - Softcover

M. L. Rosenthal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195113918 ISBN 13: 9780195113914

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1997

Synopsis

In Running to Paradise, M.L. Rosenthal, hailed by the Times Literary Supplement as "one of the most important critics of twentieth-century poetry," leads us through the lyric poetry and poetic drama of our century's greatest poet in English. His readings shed new, vivid light on Yeats's daring uses of tradition, his love poetry, and the way he faced the often tragic realities of revolution and civil war. Running to Paradise describes Yeats's whole effort--sometimes leavened by wild humor--to convey, with high poetic integrity, his passionate sense of his own life and of his chaotic era.
Himself a noted poet, Rosenthal stresses Yeats's artistry and psychological candor. The book ranges from his early exquisite lyrical poems and folklore-rooted plays, through the tougher-minded, more confessional mature work (including the sublime achievement of The Tower), and then to the sometimes "mad" yet often brilliant tragic or comic writing of his last years. Quoting extensively from Yeats, Rosenthal charts the gathering force with which the poet confronted his major life-issues: his art's demands, his persistent but hopeless love for one woman, the complexities of marriage to another woman at age 52, and his distress during Ireland's "Troubles." Yeats's deep absorption in female sensibility, in the cycles of history and human thought, and in supernaturalism and "the dead" comes strongly into play as well.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In Running to Paradise, M. L. Rosenthal, hailed by the Times Literacy Supplement as 'one of the most important critics of twentieth-century poetry, ' leads us on a journey through Yeat's lyric poetry and poetic drama. His close and provocative readings show how profoundly Yeats was affected by the breakdown of tradition and by the often tragic realities of revolution and militant nationalism in Ireland and in the modern world at large. In eight chapters ranging from Yeat's early exquisite lyrical poems-and his early plays rooted in folklore-through his tougher-minded, more confessional mature period, and then to the inconsistent but often brilliant tragic or comic writing of his last years, Rosenthal discovers subtle nuances and hitherto unnoticed connections throughout his work.

About the Author:

M.L. Rosenthal was Professor Emeritus at New York University and lectured and read around the world. His many books include The Modern Poets: A Critical Introduction, The Modern Poetic Sequence: The Genius of Modern Poetry (with Sally M. Gall) The Poet's Art, and Our Life in Poetry, and As for Love: Poems and Translations.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0195113918
• ISBN 13: 9780195113914
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384