Feels Like Friday
All my papers and exams are finished, and I have nothing else due for two weeks. Hallelujah! I also get a bit of break in that my Yeats professor will be in Florence next week attending a conference for Irish Studies program directors, so no classes! Now I just have to get caught up with TNHR stuff, put together a writing sample for the advanced poetry workshop I want to take next semester, and brush up on my French so I can complete my foreign language requirement. And of course read, read, read. For tomorrow:
- Yeats, Michael Robartes and the Dancer
- Seamus Deane, "Yeats and the Idea of Revolution"
- Edward Said, "Yeats and Decolonization"
- Henry James, What Maise Knew
Speaking of Yeats, the more I read the less I like him. Despite being surrounded by strong women like Lady Gregory, Con Markievicz, and Maud Gonne, (or perhaps because of it) he was sexist turd. The colloquy in "Michael Robartes" is a good example. He's also a master of the backhanded compliment, and most of his elegies read like elaborate critiques. Then there's his reactionary political and cultural conservatism... Since all of this is in the poems themselves and not confined to biography, I'm having a hard time seeing the value of his work.
