, its contribution to postcolonial studies, my own humble reading of Yeats's work does not permit me to share Said's perception of its "universal significance". Indeed, in "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" we find a text that betrays no interest in the greater context of the colonized world. It is a poem that ultimately is parochial and inward-looking. Indeed, Yeats's poetry cannot be seriously considered of "universal significance

, His disregard for, or at best disinterest in, China's anti-colonialist struggle and cultural nation-building project was in tune with the West's, even the liberal West's, vision of new Post-First World War order, the Wilsonian world of self-determination reserved to white European would-be nation-states coupled with a disdain and disregard for the still colonized peoples of Asia and Africa

, This then is a story less to do with a reception of Chinese literature but of missed receptions in both directions, There was little Irish interest in the burgeoning new Chinese culture, and the literature that ought to have