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A critical edition of W. B. Yeats's automatic script: 2 January 1919-1929 March 1920

As the final third of a triad of Florida State University doctoral dissertations transcribing William Butler Yeats's four-year experiment with automatic writing, this transcription, with textual/critical notes, follows the editorial principles established by Professor George M. Harper, general editor of all of the Vision papers to be published by Macmillan of London. Keyed to Professor Harper's study of the Automatic Script, The Making of Yeats's 'A Vision': A Study of the Automatic Script, and to the revised manuscripts of the first two dissertations in the triad, edited by Steve Adams and Barbara Frieling, the extensive notes offer textual and critical commentary on a manuscript simultaneously difficult to read and to comprehend; the transcription offers a reproduction of the manuscript as faithful to the original as possible. / With the completion of this critical edition a comprehensive text of the Automatic Script (some 3627 manuscript pages) is available for the first time. Of interest and import for the new insights this primary Yeats material will afford, the text of the Automatic Script supplements and magnifies the already extensive texts (both primary and secondary) which offer insight into Yeats the man and poet. / Begun by his wife, George, to calm Yeats during a period of personal turmoil, the Script spiraled into a means by which Yeats developed the complex theories of personality and history which form the basis for A Vision and his poetry as a whole. Yeats himself described the impact of the Script in the 1937 edition of A Vision (8): "after some half-dozen such hours (I) offered to spend what remained of life explaining and piecing together those scattered sentences." / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-12, Section: A, page: 4134. / Major Professor: George Mills Harper. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78359
ContributorsSprayberry, Sandra Louise., Florida State University
Source SetsFlorida State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText
Format536 p.
RightsOn campus use only.
RelationDissertation Abstracts International

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