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W.B
Yeats |
W.B. Yeats was born in Dublin in 1865 into an Anglo-Irish Protestant family. He was educated in London and Dublin and he had a childhood affinity for Co. Sligo where his mother's family had been for four generations. Yeats' father was a painter and both he and his brother Jack received training in art. While Jack went on to become Ireland's greatest ever painter (Jack B. Yeats), William showed a greater interest in poetry and drama. Yeats is regarded as the greatest poet of the 20th Century
mainly on the strength of his work between 1910 -1921. During this period
it is fair to say that much of Yeats poetry was dominated by his
preoccupation with Maud Gonne, the daughter of a British Army officer, who
he had first met in 1883 when she was 19 and he was 23. Maud Gonne's
failure to reciprocate Yeats' love was perhaps the single most important
inspiration of Yeats' poetry. Maud Gonne's marriage to Major John McBride
made Yeats realise that there was no place for him in her life, he then
married Georgina Hyde Lees. The marriage was a happy one and they had two
children. Yeats' later work is dominated by an element of self criticism
that can be seen in "The Circus Animals Desertion". He recognises in his
old age that the poetry of his youth was overly embellished with symbolism
to the point where the real theme of the poem was often completely cloaked
from the reader. | |
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