Publisher's Synopsis
"This new book by the seasoned and internationally acclaimed critic, David Pierce, provides further evidence that William Butler Yeats is still our contemporary but still in need of the critic. From a position which is at once inside and outside history, Yeats manages to hold our attention still. He continues to intrigue critics and readers alike. Lines from his poems are regularly quoted to clinch a viewpoint or judgement on the age we live in. / This study constitutes an authoritative, handy, readable, and up-to-date guide both for students and the general reader. / In the middle of the Irish Civil War, with warring participants around his tower-house at Ballylee on the Clare-Galway border, Yeats wrote that 'We are closed in, and the key is turned' and we pause with him. But then he adds on the following line 'On our uncertainty'. / David Pierce provides a history of Yeats criticism with brief annotations of books and essays from 1915
