Transgressing the Written Page: W. B. Yeats’s Radio Scripts and Broadcasts

This essay examines William Butler Yeats's early and sustained engagement with wireless communication, focusing on the broadcasts he produced between 1931 and 1937 for Radio Éireann (now RTÉ Radio), BBC Northern Ireland, and BBC National. Particular attention is given to instances where Yeats was directly involved in delivering poetry readings and crafting their accompanying paratextual elements. His broadcasting activity offers a fertile ground for investigating the liminal nature of the medium, positioned at the intersection of orality and writing, ephemerality and permanence. Central to this analysis are the tensions between tradition and innovation in Yeats's radio corpus. On the one hand, he approached the adaptation of written texts into spoken performance as a form of oral rewriting infused with the ritualistic and transformative power of ancient traditions. On the other, his broadcasts introduced pioneering techniques, marked by a meticulous attention to the nuances of voice and rhythm, alongside a dynamic interplay between self-representation and audience engagement. These complementary tendencies not only defined Yeats's distinctive on-air persona but also highlighted his unique and lasting influence on the development of radio literature.