Afnan H. Fatani

Passionate Syntax for Passionate Subject Matter: the Interdependence of Syntax, Lexicon and Quest in the Later Yeats Afnan H. Fatani

While a number of linguistic theories have been developed to study form-content correlation in poetry, there has been little application of these methods to Yeats?s verse. This study offers a comprehensive method for the integration of form and content in Yeats which has not been available up to this time. A revealing 1937 statement asserts Yeats?s commitment to a clear-cut correspondence between language and subject matter ?I need a passionate syntax for passionate subject matter.? This statement has been mobilized to lay the ground for a reading of key poems that is geared toward showing how Yeats?s later exploitation of spatio-temporal language and his complex syntactic patterns can enact a microcosm of his gyre-oriented concept of quest. The basic aim is to investigate the ways by which syntactic concepts like deletion, parallelism, nominalization, subordination and coordination are paradigmatically used to reinforce the quest theme. Two main classifications of iconic syntax are advanced: winding syntax where the word-order is distorted by multiple coordination of subordinate clauses; and straight syntax where sentences are linear and stripped of complexity and subordination.