Sailing to Byzantium | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 16 pages of analysis & critique of Sailing to Byzantium.

Sailing to Byzantium | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 16 pages of analysis & critique of Sailing to Byzantium.
This section contains 4,181 words
(approx. 14 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by J. L. Kerbaugh

SOURCE: “Yeats's ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ and ‘The Tower’: A Dialectic of Body and Intellect,” in Yeats Eliot Review, Vol. 10, No. 4, Fall, 1990, pp. 90-94.

In the following essay, Kerbaugh speculates on Yeats's arrangement of “Sailing to Byzantium” and “The Tower” in his poetry collection, The Tower.

The common subject matter of “Sailing to Byzantium” and “The Tower”—making one's soul, and coming to terms with old age and death and with the relationship between old age and art—explains clearly enough why Yeats printed the two poems side by side in The Tower, a matter which has nevertheless occasionally puzzled critics.1 Some question may remain, however, as to why Yeats printed “Sailing to Byzantium” before “The Tower,” which was not only composed a year earlier (1925) but was, more importantly, the title poem of the collection. The most obvious explanation is that Yeats wanted the volume to begin with the...

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This section contains 4,181 words
(approx. 14 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by J. L. Kerbaugh
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Critical Essay by J. L. Kerbaugh from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.