W. B. Yeats: The Man and the Milieu - Hardcover

Alldritt, Keith

3.85

13 ratings by Goodreads

9780517799895: W. B. Yeats: The Man and the Milieu

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517799898 ISBN 13: 9780517799895

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, 1997

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In the first full-scale biography of William Butler Yeats in more than 45 years, Keith Alldritt radically alters the traditional portrait of one of the greatest and most beloved poets of the 20th century. Placing Yeats within the context of his times, he reveals the determined careerist, shrewd manipulator, and political operator behind Yeats' familiar image as a dreamer, idealist and mystic. 16-page photo insert.

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Review:

Like R. F. Foster in W. B. Yeats: A Life, Canadian scholar Keith Alldritt concentrates on Yeats's public activities and his relationships with others. (The poet's interior struggles and creativity are amply considered in Yeats's memoirs and Richard Ellmann's 1948 critical biography.) Alldritt's succinct work covers the entire life in broad strokes and links Yeats to developments in Europe as well as Ireland. His Yeats is no dreamy mystic, but a "brawler and scrapper," an ambitious careerist preoccupied with status and money--very human and accessible to the general reader.

From Kirkus Reviews:

With no new ground to break in either personal life or historical context, Alldritt's perspective on Yeats as ``calculating dreamer'' and ``clubman'' is fairly mundane. Faced with William Butler Yeats's astonishingly varied career and equally varied literary output, many Yeats biographers like Alldritt (English/Univ. of British Columbia) rush their narratives through his long and productive life. Typically, their biographic jeweler's loops focus on only a few facets: Yeats the Anglo-Irish London journalist, the Gaelic League member, the semi-decadent associate of the Rhymers' Club, the bard of the Celtic Twilight, the dynamo of the Abbey Theater, etc. Alldritt's book also comes just after R.F. Fosters's fact-packed first volume of his life of Yeats (p. 192), which authoritatively details the poet's involvement with various movements for Irish nationalism--Charles Stewart Parnell's home rule bid, Standish O'Grady's revival of Irish culture, and John O'Leary's Young Ireland organization--all matters that Alldritt has less success in untangling. Even Alldritt's ancillary project--to place Yeats in the rise of cultural nationalism all over Europe--falls unfortunately flat (an unconvincing parallel with Sibelius and Finland is a case in point). He has a generally better command of the literary eras Yeats spanned, and he convincingly stresses Yeats's links to French literature, and the Symbolist school in particular, through his visits to Paris and the early influence of Villers de l'Isle-Adam's famous Symbolist drama, Axel's Castle, and his play, The Shadowy Waters. Disappointingly, the drama of Yeats's life, featuring such remarkable cast members as his father, John Butler Yeats, Maud Gonne, Lady Augusta Gregory, and Ezra Pound, gets less than enthralling treatment. A passable summary of Yeats's multifaceted life, but superseded before it hits the shelves. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright �1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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