Landscapes And Their Ideology In The Poetry Of W. B. Yeats

Landscape in literature usually deals with not just nature or environment, but more with land, people, and the interactions between the three. It is often used as an aesthetic medium, either explicitly or implicitly, conveying the artist’s ideological tendencies. Yeats’s poetic landscapes, which express implicitly his ideology, serve as a fitting critical focus for the present research.Since childhood, apparently Yeats had developed a great passion for the natural and cultural landscapes of his hometown Sligo, a countryside town, located in the western part of Ireland. The Irish landscapes had a far more decisive impact on his life and career than they could be imagined.At the very start of his poetic career, Yeats showed his critical attention to the poetic landscapes, and his various views of them were scattered in his works of different periods. But rather than remaining constant, Yeats’s poetic landscapes not only absorbed the traditions in literary landscape, but also evolved with the change of his poetic styles and themes, and of the historical and cultural contexts as well. Meanwhile, Yeats had been actively involved in the Irish politics since his youth and exerted his considerable influence on the politics of the country. In addition, Yeats also witnessed a series of important political events, which transformed both Ireland and the Europe of his time:World War I, the great change of Ireland from a British colony to a Free State, the Irish Civil War, and finally the imminence of World War Ⅱ, and all the time he paid a close attention to the political climate of both Ireland and Europe at large. Though not a strictly political poet, Yeats merged his political ideas and his literary creation well with each other and thus formed his complex ideology, which was embodied in his poems via his varied landscapes.Given Yeats’s consistent focus on poetic landscapes which correspond to different ideology, the present study aims to investigate Yeats’s varied poetic landscapes with a view to revealing his complex and varying ideology, and its profound historical and realistic reasons. Basing its theoretical approaches on the traditions in literary landscape and the cultural studies, the research mainly centers on Yeats’s poetry, but frequently resorts to his prose works, letters, plays and his historical and cultural contexts. Besides its introduction and conclusion, the study consists of three parts, which unfold as follows:The Introduction, first of all, gives a general survey of the distinctive landscape features in Yeat’s poetry so as to introduce the research thesis. Secondly, it is followed by a literature review of Yeatsian study, with an emphasis on the Yeatsian scholarship related to the poetic landscapes and political ideology. Thirdly, it defines the key words:landscape and ideology, and indicates how they will be used in the study. Lastly, it ushers in a concise introduction to the contents.The first chapter probes into the idealized landscapes and the ambiguous nationalism in early Yeats. Yeats’s early idealized landscapes mainly concern the natural and cultural landscapes of the Irish western countryside and its folklore. These idealized landscapes helped Yeats divorce himself from the highly imitative exotic landscapes and those of the Irish patriotic nationalist poets with their overt political propaganda. With the early idealized landscapes, Yeats, on the one hand, attempted to elevate Irish national culture and resist British colonialist culture; on the other hand, they happened to coincide with British colonialist cultural stereotyped constructs of Irish culture and even with British colonialist thought. The complexity and contradiction in Yeats’s ideology conveyed by his idealized landscapes were due to his peculiar Anglo-Irish mixed cultural identity and his aristocratic cultural appeal.The second chapter analyzes the realistic landscapes and the ideal class myth in Yeats’s middle and late poetry. Yeats’s realistic landscapes feature Anglo-Irish Ascendancy country houses such as Coole Park. Thoor Ballylee and Lissadell, together with their natural scenes, architecture, and cultural environment. These landscapes distinctive of their local and topographical features recall the tradition of the country house poetry which flourished in the seventeenth-century Britain with Ben Jonson’s "To Penshurst" as its paragon. A comparative study of Yeats’s relevant poems and "To Penshurst" indicates that while praising Anglo- Irish aristocracy with their traditional elite culture and ideal ruling order, in light of their declining culture and power, Yeats also sang an elegiac song for them. Despite their swift downfall, Yeats made clear his identification with them.The third chapter explores the mystical landscapes and the ideal cyclical history in late Yeats. Yeats’s mystical landscapes chiefly derive from his occult system of belief embodied in his prose work A Vision. To be specific, they are comprised of Yeats’s mystical symbols like the gyre, the great wheel and the phases of the moon, along with the mystical images and apocalypses from the classical mythologies. Yeats’s mystical and ideal cyclical history combined the mystical tradition and his own idiosyncratic understanding and innovation. With his distinctive interpretation and construction of history, Yeats aspired to keep history under control in the hope of acquiring an order antithetical to European modern historical crisis and the recurrent tragedy of mankind.The last part concludes with a summary of the significance of Yeats’s landscapes and ideology. With his critical and innovative inheritance and absorption of various traditions in poetic landscapes, Yeats formed his own varied poetic landscapes with multiple themes and visions. A systematic and comprehensive study of Yeats’s varied landscapes proves to be a valid approach to a better interpretation of the complexity and even contradiction in Yeats’s ideology. Yeats’s complex ideology displays his distinctive notions of nationalism, ideal class and cyclical history, highlighting his responsibility as a national poet, his sense of loss and frustration as a marginalized Anglo-Irish elite, and his construction of and wish for mankind’s history and civilization as a mystical believer. Yeats’s distinctive poetic landscapes and idiosyncratic ideology exhibit his multi-dimensional political, aesthetic and cultural focuses and visions, thus earning him the title of a world-renowned arch-poet.