Yeats and Pessoa: Parallel Poetic Styles (Studies in Comparative Literature)

W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) and Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) regarded style as a tool for metaphysical inquiry and, consequently, they adopted distinct poetic styles to convey different attitudes towards experience. Silva McNeill’s study examines how the poets’ stylistic diversification was a means of rehearsing different existential and aesthetic stances. It identifies parallels between their styles from a comparative case studies approach. Their stylistic masks allowed them to maintain the subjectivity and authenticity associated with the lyrical genre, while simultaneously attaining greater objectivity and conveying multiple perspectives. The poets continuously transformed the fond and form of their verse, creating a protean lyrical voice that expressed their multilateral poetic temperament and reflected the depersonalisation and formal experimentalism of the modern lyric.