A Post-Colonial Reading of Yeats's Poetry

• Main Authors: Sheng-ming Wu, 吳笙銘
• Other Authors: Shan-hsiung Ting
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/8nsjg8

碩士 === 中國文化大學 === 英國語文學研究所 === 94 === Abstract Yeats’s versatile poems with various elements of Irish nationalism can be understood by way of Edward W. Said’s post-colonial theory posited in his text Culture and Imperialism. Said’s post-colonial theories consist of definitions according to approaches of time, de-colonialization, status, rights of speech, culture, thinking, politics and economics with a critical stand to look into wider ranges and vantages so as not to take knowledge and powers as the Western world’s privileged possession. Said compares the colonial empires with the colonized lands to illustrate the interdependent and inter-penetrating relationships of the historical and cultural backgrounds both the colonial empires and the colonized land share. The above post-colonial theories are used to discuss the oppositional and interpenetrating relationships between England and Ireland to present Irish nationalism’s uniqueness in Yeats’s poetry. The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter is the introduction. The last chapter is the conclusion. The rest four chapters are the main bodies of the thesis. In the first chapter, “Yeats’s poetic creativity” has the surface meanings, whereas “Irish nationalism” has a profound significance. “Yeats’s poetic creativity” can serve “Irish nationalism,” which, among other things, can foreground “Yeats’s poetic creativity.” In this vein, “Irish nationalism” arises in resistance to British colonialism. The second chapter discusses how Yeats writes melodious lyrics to capture the voice of his pastoral homeland. The exemplary poem is “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” Most of Yeats’s early lyrics can illuminate the relationship between aestheticism and his Irish nationalism. The third chapter elucidates Yeats’s ardent, amorous pursuit of Maud Gonne, a famous Irish patriot who promoted the emancipation movement and triggered Yeats’s love for her into the philanthropic love for all Irish people who wanted to be emancipated and rid themselves from the harsh colonial control of the British government. This chapter also discusses Yeats’s poems influenced by Maud Gonne and the transformation of Yeats’s love of a beauty into that of a country. The fourth chapter explores the traumas caused by foreign regimes that brought Yeats more and more actively and mentally to move out of the literary circle of poetic creativity onto the stage of public affairs. Yeats integrated his poetic creativity with politic ideas, and vice versa. The fifth chapter explains how Yeats grew out of his early patterns of estheticism to move spiritually into his more and more sophisticated and unique self, as seen in “Sailing to Byzantium,” Yeats’s later-day masterpiece, where his later life experience was shown: how he loved his native land and the way he loved his creative life. Yeats’s occult poems can illuminate Yeats’s poetic imagination and esoteric creation. The last chapter demonstrates the unity of “culture” and “being” of Yeats’s poems in different styles to account for Yeats’s poetic creativity and Irish nationalism in details.