THURLEY, GEOFFREY The Turbulent Dream: passion and politics in the poetry of W.B. Yeats

The Turbulent Dream is a study of W.B. Yeats poetry concentrating primarily on the evidence offered by the poetry itself, not on biograpphical and other sources.  It argues that Yeats's work, sprawling as it may seem, is unified by the poet's constant preoccupation with man's faculty for dreaming.  Dream, in Yeats, is not only a mode of escaping reality.  It is a way of structuring reality, so much so that few if any of our activities are free of its influences.  We dream politically, social, and sexually.  Irish experience, in particular, is rich in the often devastating effect of dream.  The dream of independence which had become a fixed obsession, both preventing and transfiguring many of those who conceived it.