Writings on Irish Folklore, Legend, and Myth (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

Through his research into Irish folklore, legend, and myth, Yeats attempted to discover a specifically Irish imagination and to create a movement in literature enriched by, and rooted in, a vital narrative tradition. This collection brings together all of Yeats's published prose writings on the subject. These essays, introductions, and sketches are presented chronologically, enabling the reader to perceive how Yeats's analysis develops, embracing ideas and visions of increasing psychological and philosophical complexity. Included here are a textual and editorial note, introduction, sixty-eight selections, explanatory notes, glossary, and an appendix listing the contents of the 1893 and 1902 editions of The Celtic Twilight. "Yeats stood for enchantment. . . . He was the real original rationalist who said the fairies stand to reason. He staggered the materialists by attacking their abstract materialism with a completely concrete mysticism." (G. K. Chesterton)