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Words Alone: Yeats and His Inheritances
Roy Foster's two-volume biography of Yeats was hailed in the New York Review of Books as "a triumph of scholarship, thought, and empathy such as one would hardly have thought possible in this age of disillusion." Now, Foster turns his focus to the largely unacknowledged influences that shaped the young W.B. Yeats.
So dramatic and revolutionary was Yeats' impact on Irish literature that the writers and traditions that preceded him are often overlooked, just as his successors are often overshadowed by his achievement. In Words Alone, Roy Foster explores the Irish literary traditions that preceded Yeats, including romantic "national tales" in post-Union Ireland and Scotland, the nationalist poetry and polemic of the Young Ireland movement, the occult and supernatural fictions of Sheridan LeFanu, the "peasant fictions" of William Carleton, and the fairy-lore and folktale collections Yeats absorbed. As well as placing these nineteenth-century literary movements in a rich contemporary context of politics, polemic, and social tension, Foster discusses recent critical and interpretive approaches to these phenomena. But the unifying theme throughout the book is the self-conscious use Yeats made of his literary predecessors during his own apprenticeship, particularly in the construction of his path-breaking early work. T.S. Eliot famously observed that Yeats was "part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without him," and Foster shows the many ways that Yeats both shaped and was shaped by the age in which he lived, despite his attempts to construct his own literary pedigree and present himself as entirely original.
Returning to the rich seed-bed of nineteenth-century Irish writing, Words Alone draws out themes which had particular resonance for Yeats, offering a new interpretation of the influences surrounding the young poet as he began to "hammer his thoughts into a unity."
So dramatic and revolutionary was Yeats' impact on Irish literature that the writers and traditions that preceded him are often overlooked, just as his successors are often overshadowed by his achievement. In Words Alone, Roy Foster explores the Irish literary traditions that preceded Yeats, including romantic "national tales" in post-Union Ireland and Scotland, the nationalist poetry and polemic of the Young Ireland movement, the occult and supernatural fictions of Sheridan LeFanu, the "peasant fictions" of William Carleton, and the fairy-lore and folktale collections Yeats absorbed. As well as placing these nineteenth-century literary movements in a rich contemporary context of politics, polemic, and social tension, Foster discusses recent critical and interpretive approaches to these phenomena. But the unifying theme throughout the book is the self-conscious use Yeats made of his literary predecessors during his own apprenticeship, particularly in the construction of his path-breaking early work. T.S. Eliot famously observed that Yeats was "part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without him," and Foster shows the many ways that Yeats both shaped and was shaped by the age in which he lived, despite his attempts to construct his own literary pedigree and present himself as entirely original.
Returning to the rich seed-bed of nineteenth-century Irish writing, Words Alone draws out themes which had particular resonance for Yeats, offering a new interpretation of the influences surrounding the young poet as he began to "hammer his thoughts into a unity."
- GenresNonfictionBiography
236 pages, Hardcover
First published April 28, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 27, 2012
Although perhaps intended to be an addendum of sorts to his major two volume biography of W B Yeats, Foster uses the opportunity of the four Clark Lectures at Cambridge in 2009 to give us something more.
Foster has a specific argument about the degree to which Yeats was embedded within an existing Irish literary tradition, a story that has been neglected. The argument is well made and persuasive.
A neglect of historical continuities has perhaps resulted in too ready an acceptance of the self-mythologising of Yeats, the genius who arguably helped create much of the widely perceived psyche of modern Eire, much as Scott had played a role in the creation of the idea of Scotland within the British Union.
However, while Yeats does not interest me enormously, the history of Ireland and the use of literature in political ideology does and this relatively short book contains a great deal of useful meat in that context.
We must bear in mind that no writings on Ireland are ever completely short of 'stance' and Roy Foster is no exception. The dedication to Owen Dudley Edwards will send sufficient signal to the cognoscenti.
He is in the so-called 'revisionist camp' which is to say that he casts a clinical eye on Irish political mythology (which admittedly contains a higher degree of nonsense than many if not most) and he rehabilitates the Protestant Ascendancy contribution to the Irish liberation story.
But Foster is not Carroll Professor of Irish History at Oxford because of his 'stance' but because he is a very fine literary historian who evidences his claims meticulously. Without taking sides in the politics of the country, his arguments stand throughout.
The four lectures close on a Yeatsian note since that is what the book is ostensibly about but the first three illuminate Irish history as very much more complex than propagandists on all sides for particular narratives have admitted.
The first looks at the comparison between Scott's role in the Scottish Union and the differences from the situation in Ireland where British strategic concerns about catholicism and the fact of an agrarian economy worked against similar solutions.
The second explores the Irish version of European romantic nationalism, largely in the 1840s, and shows how Protestants and 'Tories' played their own role in the national mythos. The ambiguous role of Carlyle is fascinatingly outlined here though not fully explained.
The third looks at the supernatural, especially fairy lore, in Irish literature and shows it to be embedded in attempts to master and appropriate an often half-alien country by Ascendency writers.
The fascination with the beliefs 'of the natives' (so to speak) became the raw material that would eventually be used in Yeats' literary reworking of romantic nationalism in new times.
The total picture is one of great complexity where theoretical 'a priori' approaches by eager academics often collapse before the evidence. Foster is nothing if not filled with sound common sense and judgement.
Perhaps it was always logical in any case that Protestants and converts from Catholicism would play a dynamic role in the creation of a national myth in its early stages since that is where the education first lay - in the Ascendancy.
A Catholic middle class is emergent in the nineteenth century but its first instinct is to do well within the Empire and alongside the Ascendancy. Literature tends to be a middle class game.
Foster gives us enough evidence here to see that it was not inconceivable in theory that an intellectual approach, from within its own elite, might have been developed that would have had Ireland follow a trajectory similar to that of Scotland.
However such an intellectual alternative history would always have been hard going in the long run on simple socio-economic facts and cultural differences as well as the fearful colonial instincts of London (who seem to have managed to got wrong everything they could possibly get wrong from the Famine onwards).
Revisionism can only go so far because history is not only the history that says that things might have been different but also that they were not. Turns into alternative universes were not taken and we need to respect that there were reasons for this.
The utter nonsense of late radicalised Irish romantic nationalism neither came from a vacuum (as Foster demonstrates brilliantly) but nor did it operate in a vacuum. Late British Imperialism ideologically called into being its opposite.
Famine, diaspora, resentment, land wars, brutalities, the sense of sectarian injustice mingling with class war - these were all situations requiring an ideological tool for the mobilisation of power once a few men decided that there was an injustice to be fought (and there was).
Perhaps, we might see late Irish nationalism as, structurally, a form of Celtic Baathism before its time, to which Yeats was to contribute regardless of his own sophistication and cosmopolitanism just because he was 'to hand' as the creative genius for the moment.
I am sure of the Current 'meaning' of the revisionist school as a political necessity in a time of European projects and the emergence of the peace and reconciliation industry, but the truth of its analyses of the past should not hide other truths that may be less convenient.
Foster has given us an excellent short guide to the history of Irish nationalist ideology before it became fully radicalised. The book is well illustrated throughout with excellent resources at the back for further study. Recommended.
Foster has a specific argument about the degree to which Yeats was embedded within an existing Irish literary tradition, a story that has been neglected. The argument is well made and persuasive.
A neglect of historical continuities has perhaps resulted in too ready an acceptance of the self-mythologising of Yeats, the genius who arguably helped create much of the widely perceived psyche of modern Eire, much as Scott had played a role in the creation of the idea of Scotland within the British Union.
However, while Yeats does not interest me enormously, the history of Ireland and the use of literature in political ideology does and this relatively short book contains a great deal of useful meat in that context.
We must bear in mind that no writings on Ireland are ever completely short of 'stance' and Roy Foster is no exception. The dedication to Owen Dudley Edwards will send sufficient signal to the cognoscenti.
He is in the so-called 'revisionist camp' which is to say that he casts a clinical eye on Irish political mythology (which admittedly contains a higher degree of nonsense than many if not most) and he rehabilitates the Protestant Ascendancy contribution to the Irish liberation story.
But Foster is not Carroll Professor of Irish History at Oxford because of his 'stance' but because he is a very fine literary historian who evidences his claims meticulously. Without taking sides in the politics of the country, his arguments stand throughout.
The four lectures close on a Yeatsian note since that is what the book is ostensibly about but the first three illuminate Irish history as very much more complex than propagandists on all sides for particular narratives have admitted.
The first looks at the comparison between Scott's role in the Scottish Union and the differences from the situation in Ireland where British strategic concerns about catholicism and the fact of an agrarian economy worked against similar solutions.
The second explores the Irish version of European romantic nationalism, largely in the 1840s, and shows how Protestants and 'Tories' played their own role in the national mythos. The ambiguous role of Carlyle is fascinatingly outlined here though not fully explained.
The third looks at the supernatural, especially fairy lore, in Irish literature and shows it to be embedded in attempts to master and appropriate an often half-alien country by Ascendency writers.
The fascination with the beliefs 'of the natives' (so to speak) became the raw material that would eventually be used in Yeats' literary reworking of romantic nationalism in new times.
The total picture is one of great complexity where theoretical 'a priori' approaches by eager academics often collapse before the evidence. Foster is nothing if not filled with sound common sense and judgement.
Perhaps it was always logical in any case that Protestants and converts from Catholicism would play a dynamic role in the creation of a national myth in its early stages since that is where the education first lay - in the Ascendancy.
A Catholic middle class is emergent in the nineteenth century but its first instinct is to do well within the Empire and alongside the Ascendancy. Literature tends to be a middle class game.
Foster gives us enough evidence here to see that it was not inconceivable in theory that an intellectual approach, from within its own elite, might have been developed that would have had Ireland follow a trajectory similar to that of Scotland.
However such an intellectual alternative history would always have been hard going in the long run on simple socio-economic facts and cultural differences as well as the fearful colonial instincts of London (who seem to have managed to got wrong everything they could possibly get wrong from the Famine onwards).
Revisionism can only go so far because history is not only the history that says that things might have been different but also that they were not. Turns into alternative universes were not taken and we need to respect that there were reasons for this.
The utter nonsense of late radicalised Irish romantic nationalism neither came from a vacuum (as Foster demonstrates brilliantly) but nor did it operate in a vacuum. Late British Imperialism ideologically called into being its opposite.
Famine, diaspora, resentment, land wars, brutalities, the sense of sectarian injustice mingling with class war - these were all situations requiring an ideological tool for the mobilisation of power once a few men decided that there was an injustice to be fought (and there was).
Perhaps, we might see late Irish nationalism as, structurally, a form of Celtic Baathism before its time, to which Yeats was to contribute regardless of his own sophistication and cosmopolitanism just because he was 'to hand' as the creative genius for the moment.
I am sure of the Current 'meaning' of the revisionist school as a political necessity in a time of European projects and the emergence of the peace and reconciliation industry, but the truth of its analyses of the past should not hide other truths that may be less convenient.
Foster has given us an excellent short guide to the history of Irish nationalist ideology before it became fully radicalised. The book is well illustrated throughout with excellent resources at the back for further study. Recommended.
May 28, 2024
A fascinating analysis, but not without its curious use of certain words.
July 18, 2025
Wonderfully written exploration of W.B Yeats early influences
November 16, 2011
Interesting. It's a brief account of the place of Yeats in a wider Irish literary tradition. It's well done but an odd book that sits uneasily between being a scholastic study and a collection of general essays. Worthwhile.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews