The literary universe of Jack B. Yeats
By: Nora A. McGuinness.
Publisher: Catholic University of America Press
Published: 1992
Place of publication: Washington, D.C
Language: eng
Number of pages: 288
Subjects: Yeats, Jack Butler, 1871-1957 -- Criticism and interpretation
Description: Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957), younger brother of William Butler Yeats, is best known as a painter. He is less known as an accomplished writer, primarily of fiction and drama. Nora A. McGuinness sets out to explore this other creative side of Jack B. Yeats and to establish his reputation beyond the realm of visual art. Using a thematic method of study, McGuinness examines the entire corpus of Yeats's written work, tracing his themes through both fiction and drama. She finds in Yeats's life and in twentieth-century Irish history the background needed to appreciate his written work and traces the influences of nationalism and socialism on his aesthetics in order to shed light on the origin of his themes. Uncovering a consistent philosophy and a unified political and social point of view, McGuinness emphasizes Yeats's seriousness as a writer and places his work in the tradition of experimental Irish fiction and drama of the Modernist period. The first study to examine the literary art of Jack B. Yeats as a coherent body of work, this volume should be essential to all Irish studies scholars, literary critics, drama and theater historians, and art historians. The Literary Universe of Jack B. Yeats succeeds admirably in identifying and elucidating the originality and power of the vision that illuminated both his writing and painting.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 271-280) and index.