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- Title
'I do not love': Rethinking W.B. Yeats's 'Elegies' of Major Robert Gregory.
- Authors
Riel, Kevin
- Abstract
Some recent scholarship insists that the four poems W.B. Yeats wrote touching the biography of Major Robert Gregory are classic representations of elegy. Yet, throughout these four 'elegies' - 'The Shepherd and the Goatherd,' 'In Memory of Major Robert Gregory,' 'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death,' and the unpublished 'Reprisals' - one can detect veiled (as well as shockingly naked) criticisms of Gregory. This paper explores the complicated, often thorny relationship between Yeats and Gregory and seeks to challenge the notion that Yeats ever cared to glorify Gregory in any of the four poems. 'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death,' in particular, which is commonly read as a kind of ars poetica tribute to Gregory, is in fact an anti-war poem written by one of the era's most outspoken disparagers of anti-war poetry.
- Subjects
IRISH Airman Foresees His Death, An (Poem : Yeats); YEATS, W. B. (William Butler), 1865-1939; WORLD War I poetry; IRISH poetry; ANTI-war poetry; GREGORY, Robert; ANTI-war literature; IN Memory of Major Robert Gregory (Poem : Yeats); ELEGIAC poetry; 20TH century (Literary period)
- Publication
Journal of Modern Literature, 2015, Vol 38, Issue 2, p1
- ISSN
0022-281X
- Publication type
Poetry Review
- DOI
10.2979/jmodelite.38.2.1