Writings on Irish Folklore, Legend, and Myth

by W.B. Yeats

Through his research into Irish folklore, legend, and myth, Yeats attempted to discover a specifically Irish imagination and to create a movement in literature enriched by, and rooted in, a vital narrative tradition. This collection brings together all of Yeats's published prose writings on the subject. These essays, introductions, and sketches are presented chronologically, enabling the reader to perceive how Yeats's analysis develops, embracing ideas and visions of increasing psychological and philosophical complexity.

Included here are a textual and editorial note, introduction, sixty-eight selections, explanatory notes, glossary, and an appendix listing the contents of the 1893 and 1902 editions of The Celtic Twilight.

"Yeats stood for enchantment. . . . He was the real original rationalist who said the fairies stand to reason. He staggered the materialists by attacking their abstract materialism with a completely concrete mysticism." (G. K. Chesterton)

Genres: Irish Literature, Nonfiction, Ireland, Mythology, Research, Folklore, Fairy Tales

496 pages, ebook

First published July 29, 1993

About the author

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).

Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life.
--from Wikipedia

Reviews

[Joshua O'Brien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Illuminating, if at times repetitive.

[Pedro Lira]

"We who have less terrible a need dream less splendidly."
— W. B. Yeats, Writings on Irish Folklore, Legend and Myth

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty boring for something so darned interestng...