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The Failure of Words: In the Seven Woods; The Green Helmet; “Adam's Curse” The Failure of Words: In the Seven Woods; The Green Helmet; “Adam's Curse”
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The Autobiographical Moment: Responsibilities; Autobiographies The Autobiographical Moment: Responsibilities; Autobiographies
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The Public Poet: “Ego Dominus Tuus”; Keats's “Hyperion” The Public Poet: “Ego Dominus Tuus”; Keats's “Hyperion”
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The Late Style: “A Prayer for My Daughter”; “Man and the Echo” The Late Style: “A Prayer for My Daughter”; “Man and the Echo”
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3 Certain Good: W. B. Yeats and the Language of Autobiography
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Published:March 2006
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Abstract
This chapter first explores Yeats's professional distress expressed through his 1909 poem “Words.” It narrates his disenchantment with language, where language was for him once an artistic expression that would help shape and change society, now became seemingly opposed to normal, healthy living. Part of this chapter's purpose, then, is to dispute and argue against the consensus that Yeats's adoption of the low register—or plain English—is crucial to his role in British Modernism. This chapter also explores how Yeats's use of plain English and his sudden awareness at the futility of language are closely related. It examines Yeats's work in autobiography in his collection of poems Responsibilities (1814) and in his memoirs and how the low register figures and seeps its way into these texts. Throughout this analysis of Yeats's work, careful attention is paid to his use of the low register.
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