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Poetry in Question: The Interrogative Lyric of Yeats's Major Poems

Date Published:

5 Jan, 2014

Abstract:

Questions play a prominent role in W. B. Yeats’s mature work. This essay discusses the use of questions in three of Yeats’s most renowned interrogative lyrics: “The Second Coming,” “Leda and the Swan,” and “Among School Children.” By reviewing the critical discourse regarding these canonical texts and locating a key semantic commonality linking the three poems, the article posits that questions reveal a revolutionary approach to epistemology that distinguishes Yeats as a poet whose lyric form breaks the monologic mold. Yeats’s interrogative verse is ultimately shown to offer a new form of dialogic knowledge that addresses an interrogated other as a means of inquiring what wisdom poetry affords in a world beset by epistemic doubt.

January 2014: Daniel Feldman teaches in the Department of English at Bar-Ilan University. 

His article on subjectivity in the poetry of Paul Celan and Dan Pagis is forthcoming in appears in the Winter 2014 issue of Comparative Literature.

 

Publisher's Version

Last updated on 04/15/2020