This paper attempts to analyze and prove Yeats' gradual acceptance of the middle class and the people's democracy of South Ireland, just liberated from England. He always struggled against the Irish Catholic bourgeoisie and their practical and political nationalism during his lifetime for realizing his ideal vision of Ireland embodying the “Unity of Being”; he dreamed to establish a culturally aristocratic nation keeping order not by forced law and power but by imagination and desire of self-transcendence, while South Ireland pursued practical interests and became a theocracy. After burning his “rage and lust” against the mass culture of post-colonial Catholic Ireland, Yeats began to admit Catholic Ireland as it was with the perspective of the poetic transcendence, “tragic joy.” His recognition of the Catholic middle class at the end of his life is considered for attaining the sense of unity with Irish people, which was essential to his vision of nation. This paper traces his changing attitudes toward the middle class, especially focusing on such poems as “The Municipal Gallery Revisited,” “The Statues,” “Circus Animal's Desertion,” and “Cuchulain Comforted.”

• 정영희(위덕대) | Young-Hee Jung