Mythological Allusions In Yeats's Early Poetry

William Butler Yeats(1865-1839), the most outstanding poet dealing with mythological themes in 20th century, made indelible contribution to Irish culture. He's one of the most important leaders in Irish Renaissance Movement. He produced great impact on the development of modern English poetry. T.S.Eliot evaluated him as " the greatest English poet in our times, ...the greatest one in English poetry." In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His great achievement lies in his efforts to blend Celtic and English cultures together and in his imagery of mythological poetic world.In Yeats's early career, many poets such as William Blake, Shelley and Pre-Raphaelites influenced him a lot. William Blake's ideas of mysticism, the archaic ideas of the Pre- Raphaelites' and Shelley's romantic ideas have great effect on Yeats. Influenced by them, Yeats has created pictures of the ideal life and his language in his early period is dreamy, evocative and mystic. In his early poetry, he makes use of many kinds of mythological allusions from Irish mythology, Greek mythology, Hindu mythology and allusions from Christian legends. These allusions help Yeats imagine splendidly and create mythological and beautiful world to contrast the sordid reality. Thus Yeats's purposes of writing are realized. So these allusions have great literary value to his later poetry.Yet some critics say Yeats is "an escapist" and try to underestimate his early creation as "development in vacuum" and "does not produce anything to make him a poet". In fact it is not really so. After a careful and serious study of his early poetry, I find that Yeats's early poetry with its rich mythological allusions displays fully his poetical art and becomes an important part of his poetical achievements.