Romantic and Modern poet WB Yeats. His life, works and educational career. The Age of WB Yeats. His Most Influential Works.

1. William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)

2. Biography
 Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the
foremost figures of 20th century literature.
He was born in Sandymount Dublin, Ireland
and got his primary education there and
later shifted to London for higher studies.
His father John butler yeats was a soldier
and well known painter. From 1877 to 1881,
he studied in Godolphine school with not
good results and then shifted to Erasmus
smith high school. Here in London, he
started writing poetry as from very early age
he was studying poetry of great poets like
P.B Shelley, Keats. In 1889, Yeats met Maude
Gonne, who was to have a huge influence
on his writings. Yeats became besotted with
Gonne and asked her to marry him two
years after they met. She rejected him, and
was to reject his proposal on three further
occasions.

3. Cont…
 Yeats was appointed to the Irish senate in
1922 and again in 1925. The crowning glory
of Yeat’s career came in 1923 when he was
awarded the Noble prize for literature, for
his inspired poetry which gives expressions
to spirit of a whole nation.

4. Works and poetic
style
 Much of Yeats early poetry was influenced by
religious symbols, Irish mythology and the
romantics most notably Shelley. Yeats' first
significant work was the Isle of Statues, published in
the Dublin University Review and was followed by
The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Stories in 1889.
Here Yeats stepped into into the Irish Mythology.
 In 1904, Yeats, J. M. Synge, Lady Gregory, Martyn
and George Moore founded the Abbey Theatre in
Dublin. The Abbey is both famous and infamous in
Ireland for staging ground breaking but
controversial productions such as J.M. Synge's
Playboy of the Western World' and Sean O'Casey's
The Plough and the Stars.
 Throughout his career, Yeats' writings portrayed a
number of influences. Religious as well as
romanticism, his earlier work was influenced by
mysticism, which remained a life long interest of
Yeats'. In his later years Yeats' poetry became more
politicized, as the fervor for Irish nationalism grew
stronger during the late 19th Century.

5. Cont…
Two of his Major religious poems are ‘The
Second Coming’ and ‘A Prayer For My Son’.
While The Sorrow Of Love, O Do Not Love Too
Long and The Falling Of The Leaves and many
other are the poems of Yeats having
Romanticism.
Politics written by Yeats is the probe into
political system of England and Ireland.

6. Famous Poems
 “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
 “Adam’s Curse”
 “The Wild Swans at Coole”
 “An Irish Airman foresees his Death”
 “The Second Coming”
 “Sailing to Byzantium”
 “Leda and the Swan”
 “Byzantium”
 “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”

7. Conclusion
 Yeats was a revolutionary and romantic
poet influenced by mostly romantic poets
like Shelley and Keats and thus he was
always looking for a revolution to come and
make the thing right i.e. in sailing to
Byzantium.