ABSTRACT
This chapter returns to the literary 'sub-plot' of author's thesis. Yet now we see a reversal in the relationship between Protestantism and English poetry. Romanticism begins as a variable mixture of religious, philosophical and political radicalism, under the aegis of the aesthetic. What is called literary Modernism has an ambiguous relationship to Romanticism. Its aesthetic novelty is undeniable, but this novelty has Romantic parentage. W. B. Yeats is perhaps the clearest instance of the Aufhebung of Romanticism. Even before he is influenced by Ezra Pound, the high-priest of poetic Modernism, he has already learned to take selectively from Romanticism, opposing its weakness for abstract ideas, such as mars the poetry of Shelley, in favour of the particularity of symbol. Despite acknowledging his importance, Eliot is highly wary of the influence of Yeats. His anti-Romantic principle of 'impersonality' entails criticism of Yeats as a Romantic throwback.
