Italian literary Renaissance as seen by Yeats: notes about and evolution of perspectives

Abstract

Yeats’s interest in Castiglione's Courtier is sometimes thought to be an instance of his permanent admiration for the Italian Renaissance. But as far as literature is concerned, such an admiration cannot be taken for granted. An examination of Yeats’s approach to that literary period in the years immediately preceding and following his discovery of Castiglione, in the early 1900's, shows that those years were for him a turning-point. He then came to consider the Renaissance as complementary rather than opposite to his ideais. This essay tries to describe Yeats’s attitude to the Italian literary Renaissance in that period of his evolution