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THE POETICS OF ETHEREALIZATION: FEMALE IMAGERY IN THE WORK OF W. B. YEATS (MAUD GONNE, LADY GREGORY, GEORGE YEATS, MARGOT RUDDOCK, IRELAND)
Abstract
W. B. Yeats used images of women throughout his work, beginning with pre-Raphaelite beauty which he later associated with Maud Gonne and ending some fifty years later with the "Olympians" in Last Poems. Many of his poetic images are drawn from three women who played important roles in his life: Maud Gonne, Lady Gregory, and his wife, George. Through his long, complicated relationships with these and other women, Yeats's knowledge of women resulted in a change in the imagery of women from the abstract beauty of youthful idealized "fairy brides" to the earthy passions of Crazy Jane and the independent character of women who become "beautiful lofty things" because of their own courage, will, and talent. The change in the images of women mirrors Yeats's deepening sense of a poetry of human reality and the abandonment of his earlier idealizing, symbolic work. Chapter I introduces the method and format of the dissertation, and Chapter II surveys the women who became important in Yeats's poetry. Chapter III defines pre-Raphaelite beauty in "The Wanderings of Oisin." Chapter IV examines poems about Maud Gonne, whose pre-Raphaelite beauty and extreme personality were inharmonious. Study includes "The Cap and Bells," "The Sorrow of Love," "No Second Troy," and The Shadowy Waters and The Countess Cathleen. Chapter V emphasizes Lady Gregory as the embodiment of an aristocratic world at Coole. Chapter VI focuses on women as sexual force after Yeats's marriage and includes "Leda and the Swan," the "Solomon" poems, "The Gift of Harun Al-Rashid," and the Crazy Jane and Ribh poems. Chapter VII examines the women in Last Poems who have become mythic through their place in history, and who now symbolize only themselves and Yeats's friendships with them. The study concludes that the images of women are the key to Yeats's blending of his life, artistic theory, and poetic symbolism that they help to structure the poems in form and content.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature
Recommended Citation
RHEE, YOUNG SUCK, "THE POETICS OF ETHEREALIZATION: FEMALE IMAGERY IN THE WORK OF W. B. YEATS (MAUD GONNE, LADY GREGORY, GEORGE YEATS, MARGOT RUDDOCK, IRELAND)" (1985). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8526631.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8526631