W. B. Yeats is one of the most important philosophical poets who tried to incorporate history, society, art, and literature in their poems. He proved that the human desire to create the 'Self' through the literature was possible. The developmental process of his literature shows a long way to his destination : freedom of the human soul. It was natural that he has accepted various Eastern and Western philosophies to achieve his goal. Yeats utilized the Indian thoughts in his works and he did it through his own ways. Moreover, he popularized the Indians spiritual life in his works. He tried hard to give an organic unity to his whole works. Especially, he expressed the results of his efforts along his life for his desire for the spirit and its freedom in a raw. It was an unavoidable thing to accept the Oriental thoughts to him, and they effected so much to him to remain in his spiritual world. Among them there was a Cyclical System from the Indian philosophy as a mystic experience to resolve the conflict. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the influences of Eastern philosophy on Yeats. Secondly, the developmental process of Cycle whose completed forms, such as a gyre or a circle, can be found in A Vision, are traced through the analysis of Yeats’s verse. The ultimate role of the system is the realization of the Unity of Being, which is the state of harmony and unity through the conflicts of the opposites such as life and death, subjectivity and objectivity, and soul and body, etc.

• 조용해(충북대) | Cho, Yong-Hae