9. Maud Gonne, and Yeats as Petrarchan Lover

Maud Gonne—descendant of Dante’s Beatrice and Petrarch’s Laura—as inaccessible domina in the Medieval and Renaissance tradition of courtly love. Examination of the ‘labyrinth’ image. Yeats’s role in the Poet-Muse drama. Sexual-political history of the actual Maud, a woman not only of remarkable beauty, but of great physical courage, and indefatigable commitment to the Irish cause.