W. B. Yeats, the Revival, and Scientific Invention

doi:10.1017/9781009182881.013

Chapter 11 - W. B. Yeats, the Revival, and Scientific Invention

from Part III - Invention

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2023

Aoife Lynch

Edited by

Margaret Kelleher and

James O'Sullivan

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Margaret Kelleher: Affiliation:
University College Dublin
James O'Sullivan: Affiliation:
University College Cork

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Summary

This essay explores the Irish Literary Revival in relation to the poetry and philosophy of W. B. Yeats and science. When we examine Yeats’s view of science and his repudiation of Locke and Newton, among others, in poetry, it is easy to come to the understanding that the poet was wholly anti-materialist and anti-scientific and brought this to bear on his espousal of the Irish Revival. However, this essay argues that what Yeats does in his thinking, rather, is reverse the understanding of science as ordered. For Yeats, the self-conscious application of materialism is a fallacy and he rejects such determinism in favour of a multidimensional world view that is in accordance with the new physics of his day. In this way, the cultural revival in its appropriation of the Gaelic past becomes filled with the potency of past, present, and future as one, and this symbolic efficacy allows for an expression of nationality that is ultimately a form of consciousness, a new world view made manifest through what Schrödinger terms ‘a return to antiquity’.

Keywords

Irish Revival science Yeats consciousness world view

Type: Chapter
Information: Technology in Irish Literature and Culture , pp. 186 - 200

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009182881.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

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