By showing that the meaning of the word politics can be interpreted in various ways, the scope of the articles in Tumult of Images: Essays on W.B. Yeats and Politics is extensive. Rather than explicitly analysing W.B. Yeats's political views and opinions about social order, several of the authors demonstrate how these ideas have determined the textual strategy behind Yeats's works. Thus we find, for instance, how Yeats's politics of myth subsume the myth of politics, or how his play The Player Queen is an expression of sexual and textual politics. Other essays revaluate Yeats's role in Ireland's Literary Renaissance or argue that his recruitment of Homer throughout his work was politically motivated. The volume also offers an ero-political reading of Yeats's ballads next to an analysis of the strategy behind that apocalyptic idea of gyring history. Tumult of Images also deals with the politics of reception of Yeats's works by showing how the Irish poet has influenced South African poetry of the period of Apartheid, or by presenting the various ways in which the Japanese and the Dutch have become acquainted with the work of Yeats. The title of this volume thus reflects not only the many-sidedness of the discussions offered here but also their common contribution to an analysis of a fascinating aspect of Yeats's life and work.
Contents: Bibliographical Note. Peter van de KAMP and Peter LIEBREGTS: Introduction. Augustine MARTIN: Politics and the Yeatsian Apocalypse. Andrew PARKIN: The Death of Cuchulain and the Politics of Myth. C.C. BARFOOT: "Distinguished, Indirect and Symbolic": Yeats and Noh. Maureen MURPHY: Some Western Productions of At the Hawk's Well, with a Mythological Footnote. Hedwig SCHWALL: Sexual and Textual Politics in Yeat's The Player Queen. Elizabeth BUTLER CULLINGFORD: The Erotics of the Ballad: "A Man Young and Old". Peter Liebregts: The Bang that Was Greece, the Whimper that Was Rome: A Grand Tour through Yeatsian Politics. Peter van de KAMP: Whose Revival? Yeats and the Southwark Irish Literary Club. Roselinde SUPHEERT: Irish Patriot Aliens: The Irish Cause and the Early Reception of Yeat's Work in the Netherlands. Toshi FUROMOTO: A Search for a National Identity: Three Phases of Yeats Studies in Japan. Nicholas MEIHUIZEN: "Easter 1916" in the 1990s: A South African Perspective. Robert MOHR: Politics Wrought to Its Uttermost. Notes on Contributors.
Contents: Bibliographical Note. Peter van de KAMP and Peter LIEBREGTS: Introduction. Augustine MARTIN: Politics and the Yeatsian Apocalypse. Andrew PARKIN: The Death of Cuchulain and the Politics of Myth. C.C. BARFOOT: "Distinguished, Indirect and Symbolic": Yeats and Noh. Maureen MURPHY: Some Western Productions of At the Hawk's Well, with a Mythological Footnote. Hedwig SCHWALL: Sexual and Textual Politics in Yeat's The Player Queen. Elizabeth BUTLER CULLINGFORD: The Erotics of the Ballad: "A Man Young and Old". Peter Liebregts: The Bang that Was Greece, the Whimper that Was Rome: A Grand Tour through Yeatsian Politics. Peter van de KAMP: Whose Revival? Yeats and the Southwark Irish Literary Club. Roselinde SUPHEERT: Irish Patriot Aliens: The Irish Cause and the Early Reception of Yeat's Work in the Netherlands. Toshi FUROMOTO: A Search for a National Identity: Three Phases of Yeats Studies in Japan. Nicholas MEIHUIZEN: "Easter 1916" in the 1990s: A South African Perspective. Robert MOHR: Politics Wrought to Its Uttermost. Notes on Contributors.