Précis

I Précis I Heidi Hanrahan University of North Carolina, Greensboro Marcus, Phillip L. Yeats and Artistic Power. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2001. xxviii + 266 pp. Paper $19.95 Marcus's central concern in this book, originally published in 1992, is Yeats's aesthetic of artistic power; that is, the belief in the ability of art to shape life. Marcus asserts that throughout Yeats's life "the sense that art mattered so profoundly sustained him through the vicissitudes of a long career and underlay the urgency with which he continued to write." Marcus begins by discussing the poet's twin (and often conflicting) desires to both serve his country and create great art. He argues that the Irish bardic tradition, with its idealized images of past national greatness, allowed Yeats to "hammer together" his literary theories, his philosophy, and his nationalism into a single conviction. Through an examination of works including The King's Rising, other plays, lyrics, essays, and polemical writings, Marcus explains that Yeats continued to reaffirm the power of art to change the values of Ireland's philistine middle class. Even as Yeats's vision and hope for the new Irish Free State failed to come to fruition, he remained convinced of his aesthetic of power, working right up to his death on editing and refining his works so that they could better accomplish his goals. New to this edition is an introductory essay, placing Yeats's aesthetic in conversation with Jung's theory of artistic power. Smith, Angela K. The Second Battlefield: Women, Modernism, and the First World War. New York: Manchester University Press, 2000. ix+ 214 pp. $24.95 In this companion to her Women's Writing of the First World War: An Anthology (2000), Smith compellingly argues that women, in writing their accounts of the First World War, adopted diverse and innovative narrative techniques later associated with modernism. Part One examines nonfiction prose, including diaries, letters, front-line accounts, and hospital sketches. She is fundamentally concerned with women who push the boundaries of convention, creating "accidental modernisms" as they are forced to create a new language to relate their war experiences. Authors discussed here include Enid Bagnold, Ellen La Motte, and Mary Borden. Part Two concentrates on fiction and posits that women such as Evadne Price, H.D., May Sinclair, and Rose Macauly both redefined the role of the artist in and after the war and contributed an undervalued , alternate perspective. Ultimately, Smith adds to the ongoing conversation on the definition of modernism, arguing for a multiplicity of modernisms, developing over parallel yet distinctive courses, as both women and men struggled to represent the world during the war and its aftermath. 224 ...