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The Influence of Oscar Wilde on W.B. Yeats

"An Echo of Someone Else’s Music"

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Noreen Doody

    1. Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

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  • Examines the relationship between Wilde and Yeats for the first time across a book-length study

  • Argues that the image and concepts of Oscar Wilde lie at the very core of Yeats’s creative work

  • Pays close attention to unpublished manuscript versions of Yeats’s plays

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-viii
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  2. Influence and Identity

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Introduction: “An Echo of Someone Else’s Music”

      • Noreen Doody
      Pages 3-29

    3. Establishing Influence

      • Noreen Doody
      Pages 31-61

    4. “A Provincial Like Myself”: Yeats, Wilde and the Politics of Identity

      • Noreen Doody
      Pages 63-105

  3. Mask and Image

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 107-107
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    2. Metaphysics and Masks (1908–1917)

      • Noreen Doody
      Pages 109-133

    3. The Idea Incarnate: Mask and Image (1915–1917)

      • Noreen Doody
      Pages 135-170

  5. Back Matter

    Pages 313-340
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Keywords

About this book

This book asserts that Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) was a major precursor of W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939), and shows how Wilde’s image and intellect set in train a powerful influence within Yeats’s creative imagination that remained active throughout the poet’s life. The intellectual concepts, metaphysical speculations and artistic symbols and images which Yeats appropriated from Wilde changed the poet’s perspective and informed the imaginative system of beliefs that Yeats formulated as the basis of his dramatic and poetic work.


Section One, 'Influence and Identity' (1888 – 1895), explores the personal relationship of these two writers, their nationality and historical context as factors in influence. Section Two, 'Mask and Image' (1888 – 1917), traces the creative process leading to Yeats’s construction of the antithetical mask, and his ideas on image, in relation to the role of Wilde as his precursor. Finally, 'Salomé: Symbolism, Dance and Theories of Being' (1891 – 1939) concentrates on the immense influence that Wilde’s symbolist play, Salomé, wrought on Yeats’s imaginative work and creative sensibility.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

    Noreen Doody

About the author

Noreen Doody is a writer and former Senior Lecturer at the School of English, Dublin City University, Ireland. She studied at University College Dublin and at the University of Dublin, Trinity College. Her most recent publication is The Moon Spun Round: W.B. Yeats for Children (2016).

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