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| Author(s): |
Maria Rita Drumond Viana
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2015-04-07 |
| Examining board members: |
Munira Hamud Mutran;
Rosalie Rahal Haddad;
Laura Patricia Zuntini de Izarra;
Marcos Antonio de Moraes;
Maureen O' Rourke Murphy
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| Advisor: | Munira Hamud Mutran |
| Abstract | |
One of the most influential figures in Irish literature, the writer W. B. Yeats has produced a vast oeuvre spanning many genres (poetry, prose fiction, essays, theater, autobiographies) and extending over a long career, from the late 1880s until his death in 1939. During all these years of intense activity, Yeats accumulated a fruitful correspondence, of which nearly eight thousand letters survive. Part of an effort of decades that have been published as The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, an ongoing critical edition of the authors correspondence under the general editorship of John Kelly for the Oxford University Press. From an analysis of the history of publication of the writers correspondence until John Kellys edition, this thesis contextualizes the different ways in which this rich material has been used by Yeats criticism and proposes an exploration of the letters Yeats sends to periodicals for publication in the Letters to the Editor section during the end of the nineteenth century. The proposed focus and approach are based on an understanding of the writers correspondence as a distinct field of study, governed by concerns that refer back to the specific characteristics of the letter genre. Anchored by several other studies on epistolary writing, both from a more theoretical nature (as DIAZ, 2002) or applied to specific writers (as STANLEY, 2011), this research explores the open correspondence of the young Yeats to highlight the political uses of this kind of text. Considering different issues and controversies in which he engages, the study includes a contextualization of the content of the letters and an analysis of the ways in which the writer seeks to engage with readers in order to convince them. The research found that the chosen period is rich in material dealing with the relationship between literature and the construction of identity be it the personal and artistic identity of the poet, who tries to define himself in relation to tradition, or the identity of a national literature. For the poet, defining Irish national canon was an essential condition for political independence a centuries-long aspiration of the Irish people that once again achieves great relevance among the nationalist movements in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The analysis of the strategies used by Yeats in open letters reveals a growing sophistication in terms of the techniques and his use of the dialogical and performative potentials of the epistolary writing, concomitantly revealing how he matures as a writer. (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 10/19308-7 - The letters of W. B. Yeats as political instrument |
| Grantee: | Maria Rita Drumond Viana |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |