Yeats's Nations
Gender, Class, and Irishness

'An exemplary instance of the mutually enriching engagement between theoretical enquiry and the close reading of literary texts.' Seamus Deane

Marjorie Howes (Author)

9780521645270, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 December 1998

252 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.38 kg

'Provides a much needed reappraisal of the connection between nationality and gender, and illustrates it with fascinating reference to Yeats's life, work, and his relationship with Ireland's turbulent history.' Julia Cook, Manuscript

Yeats, it has been claimed, invented a country and called it Ireland. In his plays, poetry and prose, the Anglo-Irish aristocrat and the rural Gaelic peasant combine to form a new community founded on custom and ceremony. Marjorie Howes's 1996 study attempts to examine Yeats's continuous search for political origins and cultural traditions through theoretical work on literature, gender and nationalism in post-colonial cultures. She explores the complex, often contradictory, ways Yeats's politics are refracted through his writing and shows how his enthusiastic advocacy of the concept of nationality often clashed with his distaste for the dominant, often exclusive, forms of Irish identity surrounding him. For every public proclamation on national destiny, there is an intensely private scrutiny of his own sexual identity. Howes places Yeats at the centre of debates on nationalism and gender that currently occupy critics in post-colonial studies. Her study will be of interest to all interested in Irish studies, postcolonial theory, and the relationship between nationalism and sexuality.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. That sweet insinuating feminine voice: hysterics, peasants and the Celtic movement
2. Fair Erin as landlord: femininity and Anglo-Irish politics in 'The Countess Cathleen'
3. When the mob becomes a people: nationalism and occult theatre
4. In the bedroom of the big house: kindred, crisis and Anglo-Irish nationality
5. Desiring women: feminine sexuality and Irish nationality in 'A Woman Young and Old'
6. The rule of kindred: eugenics, Purgatory and Yeats's race philosophy
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary theory [DSA]