Modernist or Romantic poet?

[Mrs. Dalloway]

I know this question may be stupid but sometimes I'm not sure if Yeats was a Romantic poet or a Modernist one. Sometimes my vision changes in each poem I read.

Were his poems in different movements according to their periods or not?

When I read Joyce I notice he was a Modernist (maybe not "complete"-Modernist) but when I read Yeats I have too many doubts.


What can you tell me?

[Virgil]

It's definitely not a stupid question. It's something critics acctually argue over. I believe he was both. Perhaps the later poems were more modernist.

[Mrs. Dalloway]

Thank you Virgil.

How would you differenciate them? How would say a poem of Yeats is either Romantic or Modernist? Some of them are clear but others are not. Is it something that goes with opinions?

[phoebelll25]

Personally speaking, I would rather consider him as Romantic

[JBI]

I believe him neither to be honest. He doesn't fit either trend very well, and probably would have been rejected by the Romantics had he written in that style then (that is subjunctive to the core, it would not have been possible for him to write then) and would have been rejected by the modernists (in America anyway) if he had started writing after Prufrock, when Eliot was beginning to be hailed as the new nrom.

[Jason Armstrong]

I believe that if you needed to classify Yeats he is more a romantic, however he doesn't seem to fit either category very well.

[Niamh]

It's definitely not a stupid question. It's something critics acctually argue over. I believe he was both. Perhaps the later poems were more modernist.

I think he is a bit of both too, but there is a mysticism in his poetry, and not to mention some are quite nationalist and patriotic.
I would not catagorise him under one heading. There are too many elements to his poetry.

[kingpython]

yeats was neither strictly romantic nor strictly modernist. if anything, he tended towards the romantic - he certainly romanticised ireland, among other things - but he was not a romantic in the sense of pure adoration of the environment. he did, however, hold the more romantic belief in the poet's job as one of interpretation, of making sense of the world.

nor was he a modernist in the sense that eliot was, in the belief that poetry should echo, observe and describe the industrial age. despite this, there are - as macniece points out - important points of correspondence between yeats and eliot.

true, there is a transition. yeats' early poetry is romantic, especially during his 'english' period. later on, as he begins to write more irish poetry, we see him changing towards a slightly different feel.

never does he strip back his poetry like the modernist, nor gloss like the romantic. his work is too broad, and his place in literature at the transition between these two periods too large, to effectively pigeon-hole his entire work.