"In this study, Steven Matthews traces through close readings of significant poems, the flow of Yeatsian influence across time, and also across cultural space - from Ireland to Britain and America. He also explores how Yeats has been a crucial founding presence in the major movements of modern poetry criticism, from formalism to the Yale deconstructionists' negotiations with European theory. By engaging centrally with the work of Harold Bloom, Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida, Matthews offers his own theory of Yeatsian influence across the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.