On The Female Writing In Yeats's Poetry

William Butler Yeats,who is considered to be the soul of Ireland and the last romantic poet,won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.As a prolific writer,Yeats spends his whole life on poetry,essay,drama and collecting Irish folktales,among which his poetry is the most well-known.In Yeats' s poetry female plays a critical role and provides him with endless inspiration.This thesis,by using female mask in the doctrine of the mask,explores how Yeats represents his concerns on woman's status and situation under the patriarchal system.Female images are varied in his poetry,mainly including three kinds: the voiceless,the wise,and the rebellious.In his early poetry,with the mask of the stereotyped image the female plays a subordinate and passive role,which reflects the poet's paradoxical attitude to women and love;in the middle phase,with the theosophical singer's mask,the female delineates her wise thoughts on love,which is the reflection of the poet's appreciation of woman's wisdom;in his later poetry,the rebellious female,by wearing the crazy female mask,represents her protest against the patriarchal for the oppressed female and the pursuit of gender equality.The shift of female images in Yeats' s poetry reflects the changing of his feminine views with the development of the society and his gradually maturing poetics.Through the study of the female images in Yeats' s poetry,this thesis asserts that Yeats places emphasis aestheticism of the poetry under the influence of romantic poetry and Pre-Raphaelite,but falls into the pursuit of stereotyped female images.He also emphasizes the innovation of poetics,such as introducing multiple voices from dramatic narrative which enriches the expression of the female writing in his poetry.His representing feminine views towards love and life from the feminine perspective still plays a significant and enlightening role of understanding female and female writing for people nowadays.