ISSN : 1226-4946(Print)
ISSN : 2288-5412(Online)
Yeats’s Early Poems and the Return to the Ideal World of Myth
Eunock Ki
Hanyang University
Abstract
W.B. Yeats’s early poems exhibit a noticeable inclination towards a return to the ideal world of myth, immersed in the mystical world of fairies and heroes. By portraying the images of heroes from Irish myths or legends, he explores an ideal world through myth, instills hope in a painful reality, and opens up the possibility of discovering the Irish national spirit. By representing pains in real life to myths, legends, and folktales of the ancient Celts, the tendency of returning to the world of myth described in Yeats’s early poems has the reality of establishing Ireland’s own inherent national literature. He insists on Cultural Nationalism and at the same time emphasizes the value of peasants, who are realistic figures, to supplement the myth’s weakness that it only pursues utopias separated from reality. In his view, Irish peasants, through supernatural experiences, escape from British materialism and rationalism, revive the old Celtic Ireland with supernatural mysteries, and present a vision to move forward to a new world free from British rule.
Table