Reframing Yeats, the first critical study of its kind, uses a focus on genre and allusion to engage with a broad range of W. B. Yeats's writings, examining instances of his poetry, autobiographical writings, criticism, and drama. Identifying a schism in recent Yeatsian criticism between biographical and formalist methodologies, Armstrong's study combines an historicist perspective with close attention to literary form. The result is a flexible approach that casts new light on how Yeats's texts interact with their interpretative frameworks. Cognizant of both literary and political history, this book presents new interpretations of Yeats's work. Not only does it provide fresh readings of texts such as “The Municipal Gallery Re-visited,” “Among School Children” and "The Resurrection", but it also raises important new questions concerning Yeats's relationship to Modernism and literary genre.

The first volume of essays devoted to W. B. Yeats's 'A Vision' and the associated system developed by Yeats and his wife, George. 'A Vision' is all-encompassing in its stated aims and scope, and it invites a wide range of approaches--as demonstrated in the essays collected here, written by the foremost scholars in the field.

Table of contents

Yeats, Philosophy, and the Occult collects seven new essays on aspects of Yeats's thought and reading, from ancient and modern philosophy and cosmological doctrines, mysticism and esoteric thought.

Through incisive readings of ten poets from William Wordsworth to Alice Oswald, this book shows how poets have engaged with the possibilities and pitfalls of memory. Linking poets’ uses of personal, aesthetic, and collective memory, as well as history, the book provides a new critical template for understanding how literature engages with the past.

Volume 1 of 4 volumes.