W.B. Yeats, John Ruskin, And the 'Lidless Eye' (Essay‪)‬

In 'W.B. Yeats, John Ruskin, and the "lidless eye"', Bernadette McCarthy traces connections between Yeats's art training, his engagement with John Ruskin's art principles, the poet's developing aesthetic, and his trip to Venice in 1907. Drawing on literary history and formalist poetic analysis, this essay yields insights into one of Yeats's most famous poetic utterances, his 'lidless eye that loves the sun'. It suggests that the origin of Yeats's image, beyond its well-known reference to an eagle, might be in Titian's The Man with the Quilted Sleeve, and Turner's The Departure of Regulus from Rome. **********