Table Of ContentW. B. YEATS AND THE CREATION OF A TRAGIC
UNIVERSE
Macmillan Studies in Anglo-Irish Literature
Nicholas Grene
BERNARD SHAW: A CRITICAL VIEW
John O'Riordan
A GUIDE TO O'CASEY'S PLAYS
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Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 2XS, England.
W. B. YEATS AND THE
CREATION OF A TRAGIC
UNIVERSE
Maeve Good
© Maeve Good 1987
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied
or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance
with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and
civil claims for damages.
First published 1987
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Good, Maeve
W. B. Yeats and the creation of a tragic universe.
- (Macmillan studies in Anglo-Irish literature)
I. Yeats, W. B.-Dramatic works 2. Tragic, The
I. Title
822'.8 PR5908.D7
ISBN 978-1-349-08248-3 ISBN 978-1-349-08246-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-08246-9
Transferred to digital printing 1999
In memory of Stella
Contents
Acknowledgements
Vlll
List ofA bbreviations
IX
Introduction
Cuchulain and the Sidhe: Vision and Tragic
Encounter II
2 The Landscape ofTragedy: Three Dance Plays 32
3 A Tragic Universe: The Framework of A Vision 62
4 Four Plays and the Problem of Evil 97
Conclusion: The Death of the Hero 137
Notes 156
Bibliography 167
Index 173
VII
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Michael B. Yeats and Macmillan London Ltd
for permission to quote from the works of W. B. Yeats. In
addition, extracts are reprinted with the kind permission of
Macmillan Publishing Company (New York): from Autobiogra
phies by W. B. Yeats (copyright 1916, 1936 by Macmillan
Publishing Company, renewed 1944, 1964 by Bertha Georgie
Yeats); from Mythologies by W. B. Yeats (copyright© 1959 by
Mrs W. B. Yeats); from A Vision (copyright 1937 by W. B. Yeats,
renewed 1965 by Bertha Georgie Yeats and Anne Butler Yeats);
from The Letters of W. B. Yeats, edited by Allan Wade (copyright
1953, 1954 and renewed 1982 by Anne Butler Yeats); from The
Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, edited by Peter Alit
and Russell K. Alspach (copyright 195 7 by Macmillan Publish
ing Company); from Essays and Introductions (copyright Mrs W. B.
Yeats 1961); from Explorations (copyright Mrs W. B. Yeats
1962); from Collected Plays by W. B. Yeats (copyright 1934, 1952
by Macmillan Publishing Company, renewed 1962 by Bertha
Georgie Yeats, and 1980 by Anne Yeats); from The Variorum
Edition of the Plays by W. B. Yeats, edited by Russell K. Alspach
(copyright Russell K. Alspach and Bertha Georgie Yeats 1966;
copyright© Macmillan & Co. Ltd 1965); from Collected Poems by
W. B. Yeats (copyright 1912, 1916, 1919, 1924, 1928, 1933, 1934
by Macmillan Publishing Company, renewed 1940, 1944, 1947,
1952, 1956, 1961, 1962 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; copyright 1940
by Georgie Yeats, renewed 1968 by Bertha Georgie Yeats,
Michael Butler Yeats and Anne Yeats).
Vlll
List of Abbreviations
Page numbers for citations ofYeats's works are so far as possible
given in the text. The abbreviations used, and the editions to
which they refer, are as follows:
A Autobiographies (London: Macmillan, 1955).
CP The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, 2nd edn (London:
Macmillan, 1950).
CPl The Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats, 2nd edn (London:
Macmillan, 1952).
E Explorations (London: Macmillan, 1962).
E&I Essays and Introductions (London: Macmillan, 1961).
L The Letters of W. B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade (London: Rupert
Hart-Davis, 1954).
M Mythologies (London: Macmillan, 1959).
V A Vision (London: Macmillan, 1962). (First published
1937 .)
VPl The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W. B. Yeats, ed. Russell
K. Alspach (London: Macmillan, 1966).
IX
Introduction
In 1900 Yeats wrote of Shelley,
a single vision would have come to him again and again, a
vision of a boat drifting down a broad river between high hills
where there were caves and towers, and following the light of
one Star; ... and voices would have told him how there is for
every man some one scene, some one adventure, some one
picture that is the image of his secret life ....
(E&I, pp. 94-5)
Shelley's single vision presents, in his poetry, a characteristic
landscape or imaginative frame of reference. In this study I trace
Yeats's creation of such a landscape and I argue that this land
scape and the world system behind it are conceived as tragic. My
study explores Yeats's dance plays, the material which culmi
nates in A Vision and Cuchulain, the hero who dominates Yeats's
world.
The typical landscape of this tragic world is the west of
Ireland, its barren terrain, stunted trees, storm-beaten towers,
waste land. In contrast to this are isolated images of delight:
gracious ancestral houses, fountains, dancers, great-rooted blos
soming trees. The inhabitants of this tragic world are not all
human. Curlews, herons, hawks and the solitary swan imply
isolation and, frequently, desolation. The mythical Cuchulain
encounters Fand and the Sid he. The Young Man of The Dreaming
of the Bones encounters ghosts. The human inhabitants of the
landscape are, like the sea-borne birds, almost always seen as
isolated, brought to ruin and destruction: Swift ending in mad
ness, Parnell brought down by those he had served. They are
always in search of an impossible aim. Yeats's concept of tragedy
comes from a recognition of the inevitability of their defeat.
Behind these heroes and their landscape, Yeats constructs, in
A Vision, a system which ensures and to some extent explains the
