Dramatic Literature Yeats

William Bulter Yeats is well-known as a poet world-wide, his poems are highlyaccounted valuable in the literature history. However, researches on his theatrics arecomparatively feeble. Poems and theatrics are two different forms of literature, whichcarry his different literary dreams and emotional express. Yeats’ theatrics is one ofsymbolism plays, together with Maeterlinck static drama theory, which is the start ofmodern thinking of drama. This doctoral thesis is mainly on Yeats’ theatrics, throughusing various research methods, such as new historicism criticism, archetypalcriticism and feminist criticism, taking account of the society, history and livingbackground of his time, exploring his plays’ ideological and artistic characteristics,hoping to draw the panorama of his works, and also making the objective evaluation.Besides introduction part, this thesis is composed of eight chapters.For the Introduction Part, there are four questions are discussed. Firstly, thereason why this thesis chooses Yeats’ theatrics as the research field and what is thesignificance of the research about him. Secondly, the current research trend both fromthe point of views of Chinese research and from the world is discussed, every pointfocuses on the analysis of translation, research content and research trend. Thirdly, thethesis is about aims and contents, explaining his production track, theme, characters,structure, dramatics and theories. Fourthly, this thesis talks about the researchapproaches and innovativeness, concluding this article in methodological andinnovative way.Chapter One is about Yeats’ creation background. Irish history, culture and playsare summed up. Only in such background, could we trace back his thoughts and act inorder to know the features. Creation background highlights the complex historyrelation between England and Ireland colonial culture, which makes him try to saveIrish traditonal culture so that national spirit could be re-formed. Chapter Two is about theatric theme transforming. It lists ideological trends andcreation characteristics of Yeats’ three production periods. They are the early period(1885-1907), the mid-term period (1908-1924) and the late period (1925-1939). Eachperiod has its own standing point. The early period is about both legend theme andnationalism theme. Yeats’ nationalism position dominated these two themes. The otherway to show his nationalism emotion is to base his works on the fruitful Irish folktales.At the same time, he also expressed this kind of emotion directly in his works. Yeats’snationalism emotion is a kind of cultural nationalism. The mid-term period is aboutthe mysterious thought theme and artistic theme. Due to conflict with somenationalists, Yeats gradually quit from the national movement, giving up the idea thatplays are to educate the people. He then puisuit the mystic belief. The late period isabout noble civil death and resrrection theme. The ideal culture age is the medievalByzantium civilisation. It has the neat orders, poems and artists are on the top ladderof the whole society. What he tried to achieve is to restore the noble civilisation.Besides, the death and resrrection theme reflected Yeats’ thinking when he was gettingolder. The basic idea is the death and life turnover and eternal life, this belief wasrooted in primal belief. In this chapter, Yeats’ whole creation process and thinkings areoutlined.Chapter Three is mainly on the characters in his plays. The later stage of hisproduction, the fewer characters came out in plays. Meantime, when the number ofcharacters is getting smaller, symbolic meanings are being enhanced. Three types ofcharacters are molded in the series of his plays, they are heroes, females and the fools.These three types of characters are very much symbolic. Cuchulain heroes who areinfluenced by Nietzsche philosophy stands for the heroically temperament. Emmafemales have taken an attitude forbearance and they always obey heroes. Yeats’ viewstoward female could be understood from the standpoint of feminine criticism and thisis further confirmed by his real life opinion towards women. Conceptualisedcharacters are about his visualised thought, including conceptualised predictioncharacters, spiritual characters and death-life characters. Yeats explained the abstractidea in his work, A vision. Chapter Four is about theatric structure. It is seen that most of Yeats’ plays arenot quite long, quite a number of his plays are One Act play. However, Yeats’arrangements of structures had gone through a process where it is from unorderlymanner to orderly manner. Strcucure has surface layer and deep layer. The formerweakens plot very much, the later appears episodic and blur. This characteristic givehis play very open structure. The audience could view it from many angles, whichmakes play much more blur.The standpoint of non-logical open structure ismysterious thoughts, instict understanding makes him use the ambiguous structureand a symbol of art is used in thinking model. From the evolution process, Yeatschanges his play structure from illustrative to direct way.Which enlightens the latermodernism plays.Chapter Five discusses the theatricality. His choreopoem is not good at suddenchanging plot but more about lyrics and scenarios. It’s different from the stringing,sudden, exaggerated, odd drama. It’s also different from the traditional plays whichhave lots of actions and conflicts. In contrast, conflicts are behide the characters’emotions so that it seems like static scence but the deeper spiritual and emotionalworld are inside. Moreover, in some plays, the writer trys to disclose the obscurethemes accurately and wealthily by emphasising on the scenarios expression, whichare more deeply rooted in human spiritual world.Chapter Six talks about tragedy spirit. Yeats’ plays are all about tragedy, he likesto express this kind of emotion by descriping how the noble men had gone throughfrustration and extinction. Protagonist was in dilemma from the very beginning, whichsignifies the unchagned future destiny. Protagonist had to accept the tragedy dilemmaafter all the struggles. Even though failure, life’s true meaning is all about tough spirit,free self-awareness and firm rebellious spirit. Yeats’ tragedy spirit is based onhuman, which is humanism and modern tragedy. The writer held on mysticlsm,merges perceptual and rational worlds. He denied experimentalism and positivism.Only deep truth inside human could be touched by intuition.Chapter Seven talks about theatric theories. There is a clear changing track,which could be divided into three periods. The early period is the theory of civilising the public with mysterious, national drama. The mid-term period is the theory offinding a newer and enhanced symbolistic way to ritually imitate Noh play. The lateperiod views drama as the abstract universal philosophy and ideal mode of illustratingdrama ritually. On this changing track, his plays’ nationalism color is fading and ritualtrace is emerging. The theory and production are combined together, which reflectssame characteristics, theory is the guideline for production. On the other hand,production provides theory with practice and embodiment. Indeed, his contribution isnot only symbolism but also the expressionism in later history of drama. Hiscontribution also gives some elements of absurdism and giving directions for thedevelopment of drama.Chapter Eight is about the course of acceptance of Yeats’ plays. In Europe,comments differ from the1880s when Yeats’ plays were firstly published. To sum itup, the trend of change is from content to form by assessment domain, from unilateralto multilateral methods of research, from irrational to rational emotion by acceptance.Yeats’ plays have many origins with Japanese Noh plays. He came up with brand newplay style by using Noh plays’ set design, props, lights and sounds. The standpoint isto create his own ideal new play style which is suitable to himself. In China,nationwide acceptance of Yeats’ renaissance came in the time of1920s. At that time,The Nationalistic Drama Movement of China, was enlightened by the on-goingdevelopment of Irish play movement.The current construction of culture could usehistory as mirror in order to know what we gain and lost.