Builders of My Soul: Greek and Roman Themes in YeatsTo Yeats, as well as to Eliot, Pound, Joyce, and other major writers, as Erich Auerbach put it in Mimesis, "Antiquity means liberation and a broadening of horizons, not in any sense a new limitation or servitude." That is why Greco-Roman themes can be endlessly stimulating, why Yeats could call the Greek and Roman writers "the builders of my soul." Brian Arkin's thematic consideration of Yeat's subject matter under philosophy, myth, religion, history, literature, visual art, and Byzantium, allows us to see coherently how Yeats exploited this material and how, especially in his middle and later periods, he transformed and metamorphosed subject matter from Homer, Phidias, Plato, Plotinus, and Sophocles, and from the myths of Dionysus, Helen of Troy, Leda, and Zeus, to exemplify his central preoccupations. Irish Literary Studies Series No. 32. |
Contents
YEATSS KNOWLEDGE OF CLASSICS | 1 |
PHILOSOPHY | 24 |
MYTH RELIGION HISTORY | 76 |
LITERATURE | 122 |
VISUAL ART | 156 |
BYZANTIUM | 175 |
LIST OF BOOKS ON GREEK AND ROMAN THEMES READ BY YEATS | 193 |
| 199 | |
NOTES | 213 |
| 235 | |
| 237 | |
| 239 | |
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Common terms and phrases
2nd edition achievements ancient Athens beauty body Butler Yeats Byzantine art Byzantium Caesar Cambridge Platonists Catullus century B.C. choral ode Christ Christianity Classical coins Colonus Daimon death Delphic Oracle Dionysus divine doctrine Dublin E. R. Dodds Eclogue Ellmann Empire English Enneads Gnostic goddess Gogarty Greco-Roman Greece Greek and Latin Greek and Roman Greek myth gyres Harper and Hood Helen Heraclitus Homer human Intelligible world Ireland Irish Jeffares John Butler Yeats King Oedipus Leda lines literature London Macmillan material world Maud Gonne modern Moon mystical mythology Neoplatonic Oxford Pater Phidias philosophy Platonic play Plotinus poem poet poetry Presocratic Press Propertius prose quoted reference religion Renaissance Resurrection Rome sexual song Sophocles soul spirit stanza statues stress Swan symbol theme thought Timaeus tion tradition transcendent translation Troy Unity Univ Virgil Vision visual art W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats woman Yeats's Zeus