Yeats's Nations1997

"Yeats, it has been claimed, invented a country and called it Ireland. His plays, poetry and prose record his life-long commitment to establishing new forms of individual and collective identity. Marjorie Howes's study is the first sustained attempt to examine Yeats's invention of Irishness through the most recent theoretical work on literature, gender and nationalism in post-colonial cultures. She explores the complex, often contradictory ways Yeats's politics are refracted through his writing. Yeats had a complicated relation to British imperialism and the English literary tradition, an intense but troubled commitment to Irish nationalism, and a fascination with the Anglo-Irish as a declining ruling class. As a Free State senator, he participated in Ireland's postcolonial project of...