William Butler Yeats(课件）.ppt

William Butler Yeats And Poems Life and Achievement 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. A driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation. He was the first Irishman so honored. Life and Achievement “The greatest poet of our time --- certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language.” ---T.S.Eliot Yeats was depicted on the Irish ￡20 banknote, issued 1976–1993. His Style As one of the twentieth centurys key English language poets. He was a Symbolist poet, in that he used allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. He chose words and assembled them so that, in addition to a particular meaning, they suggest other abstract thoughts that may seem more significant and resonant. His use of symbols is usually something physical that is both itself and a suggestion of other, perhaps immaterial, timeless qualities. His Style Unlike other modernists who experimented with free verse, Yeats was a master of the traditional forms. The impact of modernism on his work can be seen in the increasing abandonment of the more conventionally poetic diction of his early work in favor of the more austere language and more direct approach to his themes that increasingly characterizes the poetry and plays of his middle period, comprising the volumes In the Seven Woods, Responsibilities and The Green Helmet. His Style His later poetry and plays are written in a more personal vein, and the works written in the last twenty years of his life include mention of his son and daughter, as well as meditations on the experience of growing