The Construction Of Yeats's National Cultural Identity

W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), the winner of Nobel Prize for literature in the year of 1923, was honored by T. S. Eliot as "the greatest poet of our age—certainly the greatest in this language" of English. And Ezra Pound referred to him as "the only poet worthy of serious study (Stead; 1986: 15)". He was 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, Aestheticism, 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.Yeats labeled himself a socialist, one who despise the middle classes, and his ideal Ireland was divided between a hard—riding Protestant of fine artistic tastes and a devout Catholic peasantry, full of instinctive wisdom and preserving a living folklore (Rogers,384). This thesis analyzes Yeats's cultural identity through his works: Yeats sought in his writing to create a fresh tradition and a unique style. He attempted to create a literature that was Irish in subject matter and tone. Yeats strove to reawaken in his people a sense of the glory and significance of Ireland s historical and legendary past (Magill, 1958). All of these are divided into three chapters, in chapter one, the author retrospects the Ireland's colonial background and cultural background under the turbulent times and points out the historical causes of identifying Yeats's cultural identity. Chapter two concentrates on Yeats's Ireland's national identity through his works, which are discussed according to his three important times. The first period is...