Biography of Nobel Prize Winner, William Butler Yeats
Biography of Nobel Prize Winner, William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was not just an extremely well-known Nobel Prize winning author, he was a very influential Irishman in the political and social fields of the time. Although given much more credit for his poetry rather than the social groups which arose from his influence, he was very involved in society.
Yeats was born near Dublin, Ireland in Silgo on June 13, 1865, into an Anglo-Irish Protestant family. He was educated at Dublin and London. During his education he studied art and writing. At the age of twenty-three, Yeats wrote his first book, and during 1888 he became madly entranced with a woman by the name of Maud Gonne.
Although he asked for her hand in marriage on many different occasions, she always returned him a declination in response. Finally, in 1916 Maud Gonne married a soldier and Yeats surrendered his pursuit. Yeats was not discontented for too long however, for he married Georgina Hyde-Lees in 1917.
Yeats’ writings underwent many changes. From 1900 until 1907, William endeavored into the field of writing plays, which were esoteric (full of poetry and prose writings) and expressed his critical ideas, after which he returned to his most familiar field, poetry. Soon after his return to poetry (1923 to be precise), he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He published The Tower (1928), and then in 1933 he published yet another, The Winding Stair. Both of these books are based on Georgina’s writing and speech, which greatly influenced Yeats’ writings. The titles of these refer to a Norman fortification that Yeats acquired in 1917 called Thoor Balleylee in County Galway. Yeats’ writings consisted mainly of lyrical, romantic, and mythological poetry. His poetry was full of individual idioms and tones of allusiveness that were nurtured by his interests. Yeats continued to write poetry throughout the rest of his life, until a day or two before his death at Roqueburne, France in 1939.
Yeats’ political pursuits began early in his life. During his time of schooling in London and Dublin, he founded the fin de siècle, a society of poets. With the aid of Ernest Rhys, he helped to found the Rhymers Club which dabbled in theosophy and the occult. He lead the Irish Literary Revival which lead to his founding...