Yeats's Book of the Nineties

"Yeats's Book of the Nineties" is essentially a study of the major works Yeats produced at the height of that literary period known as -the Decadence-: his collection of short fiction, "The Secret Rose"; his 1899 volume of poetry, "The Wind Among the Reeds;" and the essay collection he titled "Ideas of Good and Evil." But this is not a -literary- examination, "per se"; nor does it accept the traditional portrayal of the young Yeats as consummate aesthete. Instead, it argues for a reading of Yeats's work in the context of his early efforts in journalism and his complex two-fold interest in Irish nationalism and occult spirituality. At this particular site, Myers suggests, matters of aesthetics and politics merge in what Yeats saw as a -new propaganda- for the political and cultural liberation of Ireland."