Dr Barry Shiels (Durham): W.B. Yeats & the Scale of Poetry

The Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures / Centre for Irish Studies invites you to a lecture

W.B. Yeats & the Scale of Poetry by DR BARRY SHIELS (Durham University, UK)

on Thursday 11 April, 12:30-14:00 in Room 111

This lecture considers the problem of scale in Yeats’s poetry, specifically the way that certain of his poems produce their effects by layering different temporal and spatial dimensions: the personal, the national, the European, the global, and even the planetary. Can we read one scale against another? And might a focus on the problem of scale – themes of size, distance and perspective – help us understand the political and aesthetic contradictions of Yeats’s verse? Three poems will read closely: ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’, ‘Lapis Lazuli’ and ‘High Talk’.

The event has been kindly supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ireland.