Description:
Doggett examines Yeats's shifting relationship with the warring discourses of British cultural imperialism and Irish nationalism during Ireland's transition from colony to partially independent nation.
Brief description:
Rob Doggett is assistant professor of English at SUNY Geneseo. He is the author of several scholarly articles on early twentieth-century Irish literature.
Review Quotes:
"According to Doggett, Yeats' nationalism reflects an imagined nation in which all 'accept a common design' without demanding a specific vision. Focusing on the first decade of the 20th century and on 1919-28, Doggett reads drama and poetry as dialectical, moving between unity and disunity, reinventing the present in light of the past. . . Doggett shows Yeats' movement from imagined exile to poems of engagement to poems informed by his visionary system. This cycle provides a space where the Irish nation can be contemplated and imagined anew." --Choice