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Abstract

Even a dance which appears free and spontaneous to an onlooker is likely to involve an element of control, of balance. It is more knowing than it seems, for technique can do the work of prudence. Quite frequently, in Romantic writing, there comes a vertiginous moment where thought seems to be passing out of control. Romantic experience involves encountering the Infinite, but this is strictly beyond the scope of the human mind, and threatens it with a kind of chaos. If there are no boundaries to be established between the self and the rest of Nature, then the mind can be drawn with headlong speed to the very limits of the available world. From this it shrinks. …

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Notes

  1. Joan Scanlon and Richard Kerridge, ‘Spontaneity and Control: The Uses of Dance in Late Romantic Literature’, Dance Research, VI: i, (Spring 1988), pp. 30–44.

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© 1999 Sylvia C. Ellis

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Ellis, S.C. (1999). Conclusion. In: The Plays of W. B. Yeats. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27224-2_5

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