| William Butler Yeats (1865-1939); winner of Nobel Prize for literature in 1923, is the leading poet in English poetry of the 20th century. He is also a very important contributor to the Irish Literary Revival in the first half of the 20th century. Yeats accomplished great achievements in the fields like Symbolism, Romanticism, Realism and Modernism. Up to now, the study of Yeats has made much progress in China and abroad. But scholars mainly concentrated on Yeats' romanticism and metaphysics. By analyzing Yeats' late poems and his life experiences, based on the Archetypal Criticism, this thesis is going to take some of Yeats' late poems, "Vacillation" (1933), "Leda and the Swan" (1928), "The Second Coming" (1921), "Sailing to Byzantium" (1928), etc. as materials to study. By analyzing some frequently used archetypal images in Yeats' late poems, such as image of tree, image of bird, images of water and fire, this thesis is going to elaborately express his theory of gyres, i.e. the cycle of individual life and the cycle of history.The whole thesis is composed of five chapters.Chapter One begins with a brief introduction to W.B. Yeats' great literary achievements, the literature review, the assumptions, methodologies and purposes of this thesis.Chapter Two, Chapter Three and Chapter Four are the main parts of this thesis which are to lay out Yeats' sense of cycle by analyzing various archetypal images.Chapter Two is going to explore the motif of Life-Death-Rebirth implied by the image of tree in "Her Vision in the Wood" and "Vacillation". Yeats was affected by Sir James George Frazer's highly influential works The Golden Bough (1998) in which Frazer studied witchcraft, ritual of primitive tribes and myths. Frazer found the reason why there existed some similarities in primitive religious rituals, even though they are in different cultures. They have some origins because they are archetypes. The story of "the golden bough" originated from the worship of energy and fertility in the primitive religions. The central cult figure in such mystery religions is always a god with the incarnation of a young man, such as Adonis, Attis and so on. They are annually-renewed, ever-youthful vegetation gods, whose natures have close relationship with the calendar. The moment of death just represents another new birth. Yeats considers himself as the last romanticist, and his poems intend to quest for true beauty, eternity and the aristocratic values. The horror of old age that brings wisdom only at the price of bodily decrepitude and death is Yeats' m ajor theme of his entire work, especially in his late poems. By using the myth of Adonis and Attis, Yeats tries to grasp the time of aging life and body. He also intents to gain an everlasting youth like those gods. However, as growing older, Yeats realizes resurrection of body only can satisfy the primitive desire of human. He still feels confused about the contradiction between mortal body and immortal spirit although the sensual world attracted him so much.Chapter Three focuses on Yeats' solutions to the contradiction between mortal body and immortal spirit. In "Sailing to Byzantium" and "Byzantium", not fearing for being aged, Yeats eagerly wishes for immortality of spirit in the eternal art regardless of the death of the physical body. The image of "a golden bird" played a crucial role in this process. Contrary to those natural birds which sing sensual music in the mortal world, Yeats would rather transform into a golden bird to praise the brilliant and eternal art. Yeats insists that human must not abandon themselves to the sensual joyfulness any more; only in the world of art can they escape from the cycle of life and gain the immortality of spirit.Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" while Europe and much of the rest of the world is trying to recover from World War I. Yeats sees great social troubles and human's evils all around him, and believes that human has given up the traditional standards. This poem implies Yeats' anguish at the corruption of the present modern world and the expectation for the aristocratic society he admired so much. The theory of gyres created by Yeats in A Vision (1937) is the myth of historical cycles which involves the destruction of civilizations and the rise of new ones after some divine revelation. In the first era of the first cycle lasting from 1000 B.C. to 1 A.D., the Greek myth of Leda and Swan plays a crucial role. The second era of the cycle begins with the birth of Jesus Christ (Virgin Mary and Dove). While the Greek myths of the god Dionysus and of the fall of Troy serve to stress both cyclical recurrence and the destruction of Greco-Roman civilization. In "The Second Coming", Yeats challenged the bright future brought by the second coming of Jesus Christ in the traditional Christianity. Yeats foretells that instead of Jesus Christ, a "rough beast", i.e. the Anti-Christ will be born as the prefiguration of a new aristocratic civilization he longs for.Chapter Four is going to analyze the image of water and some related images such as fire, stone and blood in Yeats' late poems in order to show the inner motivation of his poetic creation.Yeats has been granted the great honor (Nobel Prize for literature) "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artist form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation" (Nobel Prize, on-line). Born with the aristocratic traditions, Yeats has a sublime goal to recall the aristocratic virtues and manners. In his poems, especially in his late poems, Yeats tries hard to gain the Unity of being by harmonizing various contradictions in order to build a traditional and harmonious standard.Water and fire are fixed as key concepts of the gyre. They both can symbolize destruction and creation, death and rebirth and purification and contamination. In Yeats' Byzantine poems, the beginning of the spiritual journey to eternity is a world full of water, while the destination is the holy city full of fire. Yeats has a life-long interest in alchemy, and he wishes to abstract truth—the "philosopher's stone" in the experiments and rituals.Chapter Five involves a brief summary of this thesis and brings forward the limitations of the thesis and proposes some questions for further consideration on the study of W.B. Yeats.Yeats regards A Vision is "a very profound, very exciting mystical philosophy and system" (Yeats, 1937: 5) which is instructed by spirits. This thesis argues that A Vision is a myth not a metaphysic, is a "collective unconscious" (Jung, 1996: 10), and is a resource of archetypal images that are frequently used in Yeats' late poems.
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