Prof. Margaret Harper

Research Interests

My research focuses on modern and contemporary Irish, US, and world literature in English, especially poetry. I am a specialist on W. B. Yeats, especially his occult life and work.

My book The Aristocracy of Art looks at the rhetoric of autobiographical fiction and its relationship to the issue of class in James Joyce and Thomas Wolfe. Wisdom of Two, my second book, analyses the spiritual and literary collaboration of W. B. and his wife George (Hyde Lees), especially their experiments with automatic writing. I have also been part of teams that have produced scholarly editions of the Yeatses' automatic writing and other occult experiments (Yeats's 'Vision' Papers) and the two versions of Yeats's book of esoteric philosophy, A Vision (1925 and 1937).

I'm interested in the relation between abstract form and felt experience, and I have an abiding interest in what escapes the patterns humans make in the world. My work gravitates towards issues of gender, race, class, and culture, particularly religious experiences and traditions.

I have served as Director of the Yeats International Summer School (2013-15) and as President of the International Yeats Society (2013-17).