What are the main works of W.B. Yeats? The Irish poet W.B. Yeats, short for William Butler Yeats, was born in Dublin and lived there from 1865 until 1939. He is among the greatest poets to have written in the English language and one of the most significant individuals of the twentieth century. He was a multi-talented author who was captivated by the occult. His career spanned more than fifty years, and he was a significant dramatist, critic, and autobiographer.
Early Yeats poetry was heavily influenced by romantic poets like Shelley, Irish mythology, and religious imagery. The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Stories, published in 1889, was Yeats’ second notable work after The Isle of Statues, which was first published in the Dublin University Review. Yeats explores the Irish mythology of the Fenian Cycle in this passage.
Yeats first met Maude Gonne in 1889, and she would later have a significant impact on his writing. After two years of dating Gonne, Yeats fell in love with her and proposed to her. She turned him down the first time, and she would turn him down three more times. Yeats would meet Lady Gregory, a second significant female character in his life, in 1896. Yeats’ Irish nationalism was supported by Lady Gregory, and he founded a literary movement known as the Irish Literary Revival or Celtic Revival with J. M. Synge, Sean O’Casey, and Padraic Colum.
He turned to Irish myth and folklore, which were important subjects in his early writings, as a reaction to the harsh materialism of Victorian culture. Yeats was busy constructing the Abbey Theatre, the Irish national theatre in Dublin, from 1899 to 1909, during which time he also served as a senator for the Irish Free State. For this theatre, he composed numerous plays, including Cathleen ni Houlihan in 1902. This enduring biography’s strikingly rich and diversified canvas comes from his life.
Yeats, J. M. Synge, Lady Gregory, Martyn, and George Moore built the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1904, giving this movement a stage. The Abbey is notorious and infamous in Ireland for putting on groundbreaking but contentious performances like Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars and J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World.
In his final 20 years, he wrote most of his best poetry, which established him as one of the greatest poets in English literature. His poetry became more sombre and less romantic.
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), The Tower (1928), and The Winding Stair (1933) are significant works from W.B. Yeats’ final phase. Compared to his later work, Yeats’ early poems have a very distinct literary style. With a considerably more relaxed structure and appearance, it evokes nostalgia. It had more to do with earlier languages and eras when poems were at a far earlier stage of development. Yeats’ literary style evolved over time and became more contemporary. It took on many new dimensions and developed into something extremely specific.
Writings by Yeats throughout his career showed a variety of influences. His earliest writing was influenced by mysticism as well as romanticism, which was a lifelong interest for Yeats. As Irish nationalism grew increasingly fervent in the late 19th century, Yeats’ poetry became more politicised in his later years. Yeats was elected to the Irish Senate twice after the country’s independence, in 1922 and 1925. Yeats’ career culminated in 1923, when he was given the Nobel Prize for Literature for his inspired poetry, which captures the spirit of an entire country.
73-year-old William Butler Yeats passed away on January 28, 1939. Yeats is laid to rest at the Drumcliffe Church in County Sligo, where his grandfather formerly served, in accordance with his final wishes. Yeats’ epitaph, which is drawn from the final line of one of his final poems, Under Ben Bulben, Cast a Chilly Eye, On Life, On Death, is inscribed on his tombstone. Horsemen, move aside!
Content for this question contributed by Enoch Ornstead, resident of Alta Loma, California, USA
