Yeats's Nations: Gender, Class, and Irishness

Yeats, it has been claimed, invented a country and called it Ireland. In his plays, poetry and prose, the Anglo-Irish aristocrat and the rural Gaelic peasant combine to form a new community founded on custom and ceremony. Marjorie Howes's study is the first sustained attempt to examine Yeats's continuous search for political origins and cultural traditions through the most recent theoretical work on literature, gender and nationalism in post-colonial cultures. She explores the complex, often contradictory, ways Yeats's politics are refracted through his writing and shows how his enthusiastic advocacy of the concept of nationality often clashed with his distaste for the dominant, often exclusive, forms of Irish identity surrounding him. For every public proclamation on national destiny, there is an intensely private scrutiny of his own sexual identity. Howes places Yeats at the centre of debates on nationalism and gender that currently occupy critics in post-colonial studies. Her study will be of interest to all interested in Irish studies, postcolonial theory, and the relationship between nationalism and sexuality.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. That sweet insinuating feminine voice: hysterics, peasants and the Celtic movement; 2. Fair Erin as landlord: femininity and Anglo-Irish politics in 'The Countess Cathleen'; 3. When the mob becomes a people: nationalism and occult theatre; 4. In the bedroom of the big house: kindred, crisis and Anglo-Irish nationality; 5. Desiring women: feminine sexuality and Irish nationality in 'A Woman Young and Old'; 6. The rule of kindred: eugenics, Purgatory and Yeats's race philosophy; Bibliography.

Review :
'This book is much more than an important re-reading of Yeats. Marjorie Howes has so intelligently addressed the nexus of relationships between nationality, gender and class that she has effected a rereading of modern Irish writing in general. We have here an exemplary instance of the mutually enriching engagement between theoretical inquiry and the close reading of literary texts.' Seamus Deane 'When a critical text can ... show me something new, complex, and interesting about the writer, give me a new understanding of the ways in which both his positive and negative qualities work together, I'm delighted. Marjorie Howes's new book, Yeats's Nations: Gender, Class, and Irishness, does just that, showing me this eccentric relation in a new light.' Mary Donnelly, James Joyce Literary Supplement 'A 'revised' Yeats is the constant and fascinating focus of this study.' Shaun Richards, Bullan 'Provides a much needed reappraisal of the connection between nationality and gender, and illustrates it with fascinating reference to Yeats's life, work, and his relationship with Ireland's turbulent history.' Julia Cook, Manuscript