Yeats and the Visual Arts

Abstract

This volume traces Yeats' fascination with the visual arts and their influence on his poetry. Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux demonstrates how the influences in Yeats' early years, especially his interest in Pre-Raphaelite painting, helped shape his aesthetic theory and practice as a poet. She argues that the analogies Yeats often used between the visual arts and literature provide an apt way to characterize his own work. In the early verse, the governing analogy is poem-as-painting; later, influenced by his work in the theatre, Yeats writes poems analogous to the three-dimensional forms of sculpture. Loizeaux's thorough documentation and scholarly approach make her book a useful contribution to our understanding of Yeats' poetry.