The Gender Consciousness Of W.B. Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) is now the acknowledged master of poets writing in English in 20th century and a major influence on modern poetry. In virtue of his great achievements in poetry, he won the Nobel Prize in 1923. And for many decades he has been the subject on examinations at all levels and in many countries. Yeats scholarship—also called"Yeats industry"—is a field onto itself. Since 1980s, gender consciousness study has injected fresh energy into Yeats scholarship. However, the research paper on it is far beyond prosperity. In abroad, the paper on this subject belongs to phase study which lacks a panoramic dimension. And in our country, there are few people to pay attention to the subject. As far as this concerned, the author firstly aims to clean up the social elements and their substituted symbols in Yeats's all collected poems. In other words, the author is to analyze how Yeats's gender consciousness is revealed in his composing ingredients of his poetry, and also in what dimension do these texts have a relationship with the cultural system. And secondly, the author uses the approach of cultural anthropology and psychology to examine his gender consciousness in his poetry. Thereby, the thesis reveals the coherent relationship of Yeats's gender consciousness and his poetry, which makes it easy to have a systemic comprehension of gender consciousness in his poetry. In addition, on the basis of the analyzing above, the author also shows a prospect, which is that, summarizing the internal relationship between Yeats's gender consciousness and the social course of western literature, culture, even esthetics, and also displaying the tension and identity between this individual and historic throbbing of the social course.This paper consists of three parts: the preface, the main text, and the conclusion.The preface provides a general survey and points out the possible research space, which highlights the significance of this topic. The main text includes three chapters.Chapter I, the author cleans out the forming and development track of Yeats's gender consciousness with an eye on Yeats's life and biographies, which consists of two parts: the first part reviews Yeats's forming of gender consciousness which also points out that being a"courtly lover"is his gender role in this period. The second part summarizes the three phases of his consciousness after his growing up. Thereinto, the first developing period exhibits his practicing and wreckage of the ideal gender role of being a courtly lover, and in this period, woman is not real, but a goddess, and the man is her believer; the second phase is that Yeats stepped down the altar, and set feet on earthliness. However, the gender consciousness of this period reveals his contradiction on it: Male and female roles and statues at one hand are clear and in the other hand are tangly. Luckily, this situation finally is solved in A Vision. In the last period, Yeats came back to life itself from earthliness, which is that the consideration of humanity replaces the isolation experience of man and woman.Chapter II, the author goes deeper of his ideal and underlying gender consciousness on the basis of his poetry texts. This chapter consists of two parts. Part one exhibits his gender consciousness in intellectual dimension by analyzing characters and gender roles in his poetry; part two reviews his underlying gender consciousness by analyzing the images and symbols in his poetry.Chapter III, the author penetrates Yeats's gender consciousness by approach of cultural anthropology and psychology, and then summarizes its characteristics. The chapter consists of two parts. Part one reveals the archetypes in his gender consciousness. And part two sums up the characteristics of his gender consciousness in three aspects. First, it incarnates humanism in all phases of his gender consciousness; second, it permeates the thinking of myth; third, Yeats completes the construction of ultimate system finally. The conclusion is an in-depth summary of three points. First, Yeats's gender consciousness embodies the contradictory antithesis, and combining and resolving of different cultural valuations. Second, going with the changes and developments of culture, his gender consciousness presents modern value orientation. Thirdly, his gender consciousness puts up a unique psychology of Irish-ness.