William Butler Yeats and meditative verse: 'Where got I that truth?' (Ireland)

My study examines the development of a meditative style within the verse of William Butler Yeats. Beginning with a historical overview of the meditative style in English poetry, the dissertation explores the personal, cultural, and political elements that Yeats developed early in his career and how the poet later fused them to form the basis of his mature poetic voice. In looking at this fusion, I argue that Yeats's primary Romantic influence was neither Blake nor Shelley, but Wordsworth. Like Wordsworth's verse, Yeats's poetry revels in the local, relying on an Irish understanding of place. I trace the development of this understanding and its combination with Yeats's interest in Nationalist politics, his longstanding fascination with occult practices and societies, and the concept of reverie. All of these distinct elements begin to coalesce in the poems included in Responsibilities, however, the apex of his meditative style does not occur until the 1928 publication of The Tower: In this volume, the meditative style predominates and acquires a force only previously hinted at.