On Feminine Masks In W. B. Yeats's Poetry

William Butler Yeats, one of the most important figures in the transitional period from Romanticism to Modernism, struggled for a systematic updating of subject matter and style throughout his literary career and wrote extraordinary poems in every school he was involved in whether it was Post-Romanticism, Aesthetism, Symbolism or Modernism. In his later years, skillfully combining reality, symbols and metaphysics together, he formed his own unique systems of philosophy and symbolism, thus inscribing his name in literary history of the world as well as that of Ireland.The Theory of the Mask is one of Yeats's major contributions to Modernism. Mask refers to one's own intrinsic opposite or antithetical self and the recreation of his emotion. Only when one's self finds its anti-self and unifies with it consciously, can one's personality achieve perfection. And creation springs from this process. Yeats's theory and practice of Mask and personality explore new spheres for poetic expression since his poetry reflects the richness and contradictions of soul by probing and studying this potential, overlooked aspect of personality.In A Vision, Yeats expatiated on his theories about the evolution of history and about different kinds of personalities. The application of these theories to himself enabled him to find that "the woman in me" was the poetic and mystical wellspring of his mature verse. The discovery that his daimon was female not only enlarged Yeats's understanding of temporal and spiritual reality but also radically transformed his interpretation of the aesthetic process. As Yeats spoke with the voice of his female daimon, he stepped into the heart of his role. The voice of the female daimon and that of the poet himself form the double-voiced verse in which two voices echo with each other to mirror his own inner quest and reveal his search for meaning in his mystical, sexual, and aesthetic life. The ramifications of double-voiced verse reach beyond literary theory to gender and women's studies, philosophy, and psychology.What does it mean when a man writes in the voice of a woman? Beginning with an analysis of Yeats's theory of the Mask, the present thesis examines Yeats's answer in his mature theory of the creative self as bisexual and demonstrates the development of feminine masks in the lyrics "Solomon to Sheba", "Solomon to the Witch" and the sequences "A Man Young and Old", "A Woman Young and Old", "The Phases of the Moon" and other poems. Meanwhile, the thesis also analyzes tentatively Yeats's symbolism and significance of this aesthetic technique at the same time.