On "Queen" Images In W.B. Yeats's Five Plays

The mountain of literary works of William Butler Yeats occupies an unshakable position in Irish and world literature,serving as an instrument for learning about the era he lived and at the same time probing into his inner heart.This dissertation focuses on the female characters in Yeats's five plays,a group rarely getting enough attention in studies on Yeats and his works.With the interpretation of different “Queen” images these female characters represent,the goal that a new level of understanding Yeats is to be reached.The dissertation is divided into five chapters.The introduction chapter first gives a brief presentation of Yeats's queens in these five plays,explaining reasons for choosing them as examples,and is followed by the literature review that reveals the necessity of taking the female characters as the object of study.The second chapter focuses on the origin of these plays.Yeats revives ancient Irish myth and folklore in works,seeking for the cultural root of a nation utterly separate from Britain;and then comes a dabbling into Yeats's occultism respectively from the perspective of religion and philosophy.The religious element in The Land of Heart's Desire is staged as a confrontation between Christian power and the natural power,and in The Only Jealousy of Emer,the discord of three females originated by the split hero reflects Yeats's philosophical thinking about the problem of the flesh and the spirit.The fourth chapter discusses Yeats's political ideal in terms of Ireland itself and the Anglo-Irish relationship.The cultural nationalism makes its appearance when Yeats shows the fighting and revolt of the Irish for their independence through a combination of two female symbols,and his unique “noble” complex delineates an idealized political blueprint for Ireland.The last chapter draws a conclusion of the playwright Yeats and his various queens.Theoretically,poetry is personal but drama collective.However,Yeats's creation of poetic drama is based on his interaction with the whole Ireland he loves in terms of culture,thought and politics.The “Queen” images in these plays give an expression of his cultural revival of Irish myth and folklore,his ideological system of occultism and political ideal,making up his legendary dramatic career.