The Evolution of Yeats's Dance Imagery
THE EVOLUTION OF YEATS’S DANCE IMAGERY: THE BODY, GENDER, AND NATIONALISM Deng-Huei Lee, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2003 APPROVED: David Holdeman, Major Professor Peter Shillingsburg, Committee Member Scott Simpkins, Committee Member Brenda Sims, Chair of Graduate Studies in English James Tanner, Chair of the Department of English C. Neal Tate, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Lee, Deng-Huei, The Evolution of Yeats’s Dance Imagery: The Body, Gender, and Nationalism. Doctor of Philosophy (British Literature), August 2003, 168 pp., 6 illustrations, 147 titles. Tracing the development of his dance imagery, this dissertation argues that Yeats’s collaborations with various early modern dancers influenced his conceptions of the body, gender, and Irish nationalism. The critical tendency to read Yeats’s dance emblems in light of symbolist- decadent portrayals of Salome has led to exaggerated charges of misogyny, and to neglect of these emblems’ relationship to the poet’s nationalism. Drawing on body criticism, dance theory, and postcolonialism, this project rereads the politics that underpin Yeats’s idea of the dance, calling attention to its evolution and to the heterogeneity of its manifestations in both written texts and dramatic performances. While the dancer of Yeats’s texts follow the dictates of male-authored scripts, those in actual performances of his works acquired more agency by shaping choreography. In addition to working directly with Michio Ito and Ninette de Valois, Yeats indirectly collaborated with such trailblazers of early modern dance as Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, and Ruth St.
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