Twilights of Dew and of Fire: A Study of the Early Poetry of W.B. Yeats

Abstract

To undertake a study of Yeats's poetry involves a tremendous risk, for Yeats had assimilated great bodies of myth and thought that emerge, frequently in obscure form, in his poetry. The risk is in the unfailing temptation to approach the poetry as a code which, if deciphered through research into Yeats's sources, will yield the meaning behind the poetry. The temptation becomes greater in the earlier poetry. for one cannot approach the poetry "cold" and learn much from it or about it. I have tried to straddle the line between a research-based thesis and a purely subjective interpretation. Much of what I gathered from initial sources I used to give myself a background to begin, and thus, this material was not cited in the thesis itself.