"The 'complimentary dream' perhaps". I generi letterari in William Butler Yeats

Yeats’s views on literary genres have never been adequately examined in spite of his frequent references – both direct and indirect – to them and to their implications in his works. The term “hybrid” - which is often used to describe their features, dynamics and relationships in writers between the nineteenth and the twentieth century – should not be applied to his thought and creative work as regards literary genres: in fact, Yeats never used it and preferred “complexity” and, less frequently, “contamination” to the couple “hybrid”/”hibridization”. After contextualizing Yeats’s thought on and practice of literary genres both in his epoch and in his works, this essay examines the favourite Yeatsian triad “narrative-lyric-dramatic”.