Yeats's Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Tradition: from Painting to Sculpture.

Abstract

William Butler Yeats's lifelong practice of discussing literature by analogy to painting and sculpture invites exploration of the relationship between his poetry and the visual arts. Raised in John Butler Yeats's Pre-Raphaelite studio, Yeats derived his tastes and aesthetic precepts from the late nineteenth century's br and of Pre-Raphaelitism. Although Yeats was trained as a Pre-Raphaelite and always remained one in aesthetic principles and perceptions, his own work moves from foundation on Pre-Raphaelite painting to foundation on Renaissance and Greek sculpture. Chapter one discusses the formation of Yeats's Pre-Raphaelitism. Because he identified the Pre-Raphaelite movement as Rossetti, Morris, Burne-Jones backed by their ancestor Blake, he saw Pre-Raphaelite art as the creation of remote dream worlds inhabited by ecstatic women. Bedford Park, where he encountered Morris's arts and crafts movement, showed him the Pre-Raphaelite attempt to unify the arts with each other and with life, goals he adopted as his own and advocated for Irel and . The formal characteristics he found in Pre-Raphaelite art remained st and ards of aesthetic judgment for life: pattern, colour, and line. Armed with his version of Pre-Raphaelitism, Yeats assembled a gallery of admired artists which included Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Moreau, Whistler, Watts and Beardsley. Chapter two examines Yeats's struggle to unify poetry and the visual arts. His program for poetry of vision linked poetic production to Pre-Raphaelite principles. It also established the role of magic, itself centered for Yeats on the visual, in the creation of images for poetry. In W. T. Horton, artist and friend, Yeats saw the possibilities and problems of founding poetry in vision. Yeats also connected his work to the visual arts by insisting on finely designed covers for his books. Althea Gyles, an artist of Pre-Raphaelite ancestry, provided designs which pleased Yeats by imaging his poetic interests. Chapter three follows the struggle for unity through Yeats's years in the theatre. Intent on getting the right visual effects for his plays, Yeats campaigned against realistic set design. Arguing for decorative scenery, he identified his theatric aims with Pre-Raphaelite painting. In Gordon Craig, the great innovator of the modern stage, he found ally and collaborator. But practical experience taught him that taking painting as model reduced dramatic tension by distancing the audience and the players. The Noh drama offered solution. It suggested sculpture as model. Yeats's Noh plays manipulate sculptural form for dramatic effect and satisfied him in part because they fulfilled the Pre-Raphaelite aim of fusing form and idea. Chapter four discusses A Vision and shows the lessons of the theatre carried over into the late poetry. A Vision, founded in Yeats's search for "our more profound Pre-Raphaelitism," encouraged sculpture as model and offered Yeats historical examples which argued its efficacy. In the later poems he adopted the sculptural art of Michelangelo whose spirit and voice inform them. As he had in the theatre, he created dramatic tension by producing the effects of sculpture. "The Tower" shows his sculptural form at work; "The Statues" offers poetic argument for taking the work of Michelangelo's ancestor, Phidias, as image of the art Irel and should create.