ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Yeats at the private and artistic level. It broadly addresses Yeats’ aesthetic experiments with poetic form as he transitions from an artistry grounded in symbolist aesthetics to one of materialism and embodiment. The chapter engages primarily with “Adam’s Curse” and “Before the World was Made” alongside oblique references to “A Coat” and “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” where relevant. It investigates Yeats’ various application of the dancer archetype in “The Double Vision of Michael Robartes” and “Among School Children”. The chapter focuses on the figure of the dancer as a work of art and the basis for art. It includes “A Prayer for My Daughter” but focuses primarily on “Leda and the Swan” and “The Mother of God” as crux poems that establish Yeats’ conception of the body as a conduit to knowledge. The chapter investigates the scatological insistence in Yeats’ later work on base physicality as the only possible foundation for genuine spiritual or artistic expression.
