Yeats’s <em>Autobiographies</em> and the Making of the Self

Both in his prose and poetry William Butler Yeats showed a life- long interest in the shaping of the self, achieved through a careful rearrangement of experience. Autobiographies is a collection of texts written at different times intentionally arranged by the author not according to the order of co...

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Main Author: Elena Cotta Ramusino
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Firenze University Press 2013-03-01
Series:Studi Irlandesi
Online Access:https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-sijis/article/view/7151
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author Elena Cotta Ramusino
author_facet Elena Cotta Ramusino
author_sort Elena Cotta Ramusino
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description Both in his prose and poetry William Butler Yeats showed a life- long interest in the shaping of the self, achieved through a careful rearrangement of experience. Autobiographies is a collection of texts written at different times intentionally arranged by the author not according to the order of composition but to the chronological growth of the subject, from early childhood to the Nobel prize award. Until the period when autobiography started to be recognized as a specific genre with its own rules, this work was resorted to as a support for the study of the author’s production or as a key to discovering his life, disregarding the fact that autobiographical writing is not the narration of a life, but rather a narrative of the self as seen from the present moment of writing. Yeats’s Autobiographies is the narrative of how he struggled to shape his own personal identity as well as the identity of the nation. Life stories flourished in the Revival and post-Revival periods in Ireland, thus testifying to a widely shared belief in the correspondence of individual and national destiny. Along with collective drives, personal reasons also compelled him to look back and write his own autobiography. The author managed to provide a text in which everything, from syntactic to linguistic choices, from his treatment of time and places to his presentation of friends and rivals, combines to give a composite portrait of himself from early expectations to final achievement.
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spelling doaj.art-8cc881d1d3764f69a2923d95d65b18f22022-12-22T03:37:30ZengFirenze University PressStudi Irlandesi2239-39782013-03-012210.13128/SIJIS-2239-3978-1241210858Yeats’s <em>Autobiographies</em> and the Making of the SelfElena Cotta RamusinoBoth in his prose and poetry William Butler Yeats showed a life- long interest in the shaping of the self, achieved through a careful rearrangement of experience. Autobiographies is a collection of texts written at different times intentionally arranged by the author not according to the order of composition but to the chronological growth of the subject, from early childhood to the Nobel prize award. Until the period when autobiography started to be recognized as a specific genre with its own rules, this work was resorted to as a support for the study of the author’s production or as a key to discovering his life, disregarding the fact that autobiographical writing is not the narration of a life, but rather a narrative of the self as seen from the present moment of writing. Yeats’s Autobiographies is the narrative of how he struggled to shape his own personal identity as well as the identity of the nation. Life stories flourished in the Revival and post-Revival periods in Ireland, thus testifying to a widely shared belief in the correspondence of individual and national destiny. Along with collective drives, personal reasons also compelled him to look back and write his own autobiography. The author managed to provide a text in which everything, from syntactic to linguistic choices, from his treatment of time and places to his presentation of friends and rivals, combines to give a composite portrait of himself from early expectations to final achievement.https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-sijis/article/view/7151
spellingShingle Elena Cotta Ramusino
Yeats’s <em>Autobiographies</em> and the Making of the Self
Studi Irlandesi
title Yeats’s <em>Autobiographies</em> and the Making of the Self
title_full Yeats’s <em>Autobiographies</em> and the Making of the Self
title_fullStr Yeats’s <em>Autobiographies</em> and the Making of the Self
title_full_unstemmed Yeats’s <em>Autobiographies</em> and the Making of the Self
title_short Yeats’s <em>Autobiographies</em> and the Making of the Self
title_sort yeats s em autobiographies em and the making of the self
url https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-sijis/article/view/7151
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