With Spivak’s term “subaltern” the purpose of this paper is to present a relationship between post-colonialism and feminism in Irish literature, and to demonstrate the feminine images represented in modern Irish contemporary texts. The Irish literary society tends to regard the minority women as the inferior one in the process of de-colonization. But the feminie writing is try to overcome the established attitude in post-colonial literature. At this juncture, Heaney, rather than focusing on particular events from colonialism to post-colonialism, concentrates primarily on the receptivity, remembering subaltern’s life, history, territory, and tongue of native women. His writing is not from the post-colonial literary tradition but from the native receptivity toward the women's life and its reality. Finally, through the reception of the feminine writing with the appropriated de-colonial writing, we should address “the women” represented in post-colonial text as the subaltern subjectivity.

This paper discusses Yeats’s ideas on the transmigration of Souls in A Vision and his poems. Yeats creates the six levels of a human's reincarnation. He insists that Consciousness corresponds with one another in this life and the afterlife in A Vision. He thinks that Consciousness moves toward Will and goes in cycle in Faculties at the moment. However, Consciousness submerges Spirit in Principles and after Spirit unifies Celestial Body it becomes extinct. When Principles dominate the system in the afterlife, Spirit circulates in the system. Faculties have an effect on from birth to death in human, but although submerging in Faculties at the period, Principles have a tremendous impact on getting a new physical body in the afterlife. If a human passes away his body, Consciousness transfers from Faculties to Principles, also from Will to Spirit. And then it arrives at The Vision of Blood Kindred and Meditation. The Vision of Blood Kindred is the illusions of every past experience in Husk and Fascinate Body, resulted in final body. And Meditation is to disappear Husk and Fascinate Body and to appear Spirit and Celestial Body. After that, the stream of soul continuously changes into Return, Dreaming Back, Phantasmagoria, Shiftings, Beatitude, Purification, Foreknowledge step by step. Yeats described them as a cyclical course of afterlife in “Byzantium” and “The Man and the Echo.” In conclusion, a human is reborn in the afterlife through transferring from Principles to Faculties, also from Spirit to Will. The practical transition from Principles Gyre to Faculties Gyre takes place when Consciousness travels from Spirit to a new Husk. So a human passes away from this world and through the six courses of reincarnation in the afterlife. He is reborn in another world.

Somewhat comically-described everyday lives before the Rising have no direct connection with the event itself. Behind the images from superficial meetings with sham courtesy of characters follow violent associations of death implying diverse layers of change in the realms of history, politics, Irishness and individual lives. Yeats enumerates personal characteristics of revolutionary leaders in order to hint these characteristics alone can’t transfigure historical realities. He shows us that those acquaintances whom he occasionally came across before the uprising are not directly related to the heroic act. On the other hand, he also reveals that the underlying causes of the upheaval are the very simple everyday relationship. Above all, “Easter 1916” solves well the problem how a piece of poem acquires an impartial public voice out of secular opinions. This work is not embellished with symbolic abstruseness and therefore can be paraphrased into a comparatively easy prose writing. However, even its format change, if at all, doesn't quell its life force. The poet effectively evades a direct interpretation of the Rising that can help change the fate of the nation and so, he reconstructs the symbolic significance and context of the event into a literary masterpiece. In its form, the use of refrain emphasizing change shows directness and simplicity to conclude the verse. Moreover, Yeats frankly confesses that he was wrong in judging the victims’ heroic capability in the political aspect, but he doesn't make them appear pathetic poetic personae. The poem extols the heroic acts of the dead in the compressed verse and at the same time reproaches their decision to cast away their own precious lives. The refrain implies changes in the world caused by the Rising, political shifts in the international relationship closely linked with independence and colonial management, and the severance of lives of people with whom the poet meet routinely everyday. That is to say, it refers to the mythological transformation of the leaders before Irish people’s eyes as well as to the historical fact that British authority made them into corpses. ‘Change’ in the refrain evokes not only the tragic death of leaders in the uprising but the significance obtained through their death as well. In this context, a completeness of change out of the glorious sacrifice is also inferred. Thus, ‘change’ indicates the tragic stasis the leaders gained through the victimization of their own lives and reveals a poetic movement from this world to eternity. The poem sublimates the leaders as national icons permanently nesting in the bosom of their compatriots even though they lost their worldly lives. In this way, Yeats elegizes the victims by blending all the matters of history, politics and the nation together into a commemorative poem. This stream of thoughts triggered by the national tragedy creates a pivotal group elegy connoting deep insight into the universal death.

This paper examines animal motifs related to Cuchulain in Ulster Cycle, especially Lady Gregory’s Cuchulain of Muirthemne and Celtic culture. In the preface of the text Yeats said that she will have given Ireland its Mabinogion, its Morte d’Arthur, its Nibelungenlied. The Ulster sagas are documents surviving from a Celtic culture unaffected by the Latin civilization of the rest of Europe. Set a century before the time of Christ, the Ulster stories posit an older world than any known in other European vernaculars. The narrative materials were transcribed as early as 8th century continued to be part of living literature until 18th. Esteem for the Ulster Cycle passed into English during the 19th century, when nationalists searched ancient literature for heroes to replace those imposed on Irish children by English-run schools. During the generation of Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats and John Millington Synge the Red Branch Cycle fostered widespread adaptation in English. Lady Gregory expected to let Irish students know that the Cuchulain stories were put into permanent literary form at about the same date as Beowulf, some 100 to 250 years before the Scandinavian mythology, at least 200 years before the oldest Charlemagne romance, and probably 300 years before the earliest draft of Nibelungenlied. In Cuchulain of Muirthemne there are twenty stories in English. Lady Grogery have exchanged for the grotesque accounts of Cuchulain’s distortion into the appearance of a god. In the Cuchulain’s stories still remains the ancient heart of Ireland and Celtic culture. In the Celtic supernatural world animals can talk, move about like humans, jest, warn and shapeshift. The Celts not only relied on animals for their survival but they respect them, learned them, and honoured them. The legendary Irish warrior and solar hero, Cuchulain, son of the god Lugh, exhibited the ‘hero light,’ a flaming aura, around his head when he entered the state of battle frenzy. As a lineage of Angus the hero fell in love with a swan goddess Fand. And was unsuccessfully wooed by the Morrigan in her raven aspect. Cuchulain, whose name means “Culan’s Hound,” was a Gaelic hero likened in his exploits to both the Greek Hercules and Achilles. He is said to have been able to perform a ‘salmon’s leap.’ In the War for the Bull of Cuailgne the hero single- handedly defends Ulster against the depredations of Connacht, as led by Medb and Ailill. The young Cuchulain, a superhuman, semi-divine hero has two chariot- horses, the Black of Saingliu and the Grey of Macha. The clairvoyante Grey cries tears of blood at the foreknowledge of his death. when the Ulster hero Cuchulain is finally killed, he has such a fearsome reputation that it is not until one of the raven-goddesses alights on his shoulder that his enemies believe he is dead and dare to approach and behead him. To the Celts, animals were special and central to all aspects of their world

One of the most important characteristic features of Yeats’s book of poems involves the fact that the poet intended his entire volumes of his poems to function as a single, unified work of art. In other words, the meaning of an individual poem in any Yeats’s book of poems cannot be fully appreciated without considering its relationship with the poems placed right next to it. Talking about one individual poem alone in a volume is like interpreting one chapter of a novel without linking its meaning to the next chapters. For this reason, understanding Yeats’s poems requires looking into a relationship between the poems and the principle of arranging the entire poems in a book of poems. In this paper, what I am trying to achieve is to answer the following three questions. First, what is a governing principle of ordering poems in Yeats's second book of poems, The Rose (1983)? Second, how such a structure or an arrangement helps to convey the thematic concern of The Rose effectively? Lastly, how Yeats develops himself as a poet after publishing his first book of Poems Crossways (1889). When we compare the method of ordering The Rose poems with that of Crossways, we see that Yeats slowly matures as a poet as he ages. Crossways consists of two groups of poems each with a religious and political context, respectively. In the first group, Yeats places poems dealing with balancing the conflicting forces of action and stasis, the ideal and the real, and imagination and actuality. The second group includes poems balancing private and public, past and present, and Catholic and Protestant, high and low classes, and unionists and nationalists. Yeats's ultimate message: just as we need a reconciliation of opposing religious elements, so we should achieve a harmony of different political groups. The Rose, on the other hand, reminds us of a kind of well-structured drama with the prologue poem working as the first act of a play. The first poem holds the key to the arrangement of 23 poems in The Rose. In other words, each line of “The Rose upon the Rood of Time” foretells how the entire 23 poems will be placed and foregrounds the main message of the book of poems. The first poem talks about a reconciliation of opposing forces and this message is repeated throughout the book by dealing with the idea of balancing two antinomian ideas. In addition, the time of each poem moves in-between the present and the past and eventually advances into the future, as is foreshadowed in the preface poem. The presence of the poet can also be felt throughout the book of poems. In The Rose, we meet a poet who keeps emphasizing the importance of maintaining a balance between mysticism and realism, reconciling his joy of love and pain of his failure, and announcing his love of Ireland or his nationalist ideals. Through The Rose, Yeats repeats the importance of balancing religion, people, and love. Although the second book of poems contains different poems and structural pattern compared with the first book of poems, his basic message remains the same: mysticism should be reconciled with realism and nationalism.

Despite the controversy over Yeat’s political position, it is manifest that he was a nationalist who passionately loved his homeland, Ireland. But the nationalism he has pursued was different from those of other nationalists of his time. This thesis explores Yeats’ special nature of nationalism of that is reflected in his various works. Yeats’ nationalist philosophy is formed on the basis of his view of cyclic history which is well embodied in A Vision. Unlike the historical view of the Western world, as a whole Yeats does not presuppose any specific teleological beginning or end. For Yeats, death and revival are always repeated anew in regular spans of time: the universe repeats genesis and extinction and every life repeats metempsychosis. He attacks the project of modernity as a teleological fiction, : that is, as a myth occupying the spirit of the time, and as a mere “gigantic story.” There is no possibility for a tradition to definitely overcome another waning it completely, and thus history is far from being teleological. Yeats has tried to serve his homeland through poetry and drama, making use of their popularity for heightening people’s perception of the reality of the time and his artistic achievement. But the upcoming middle class, arising as a new political power in Ireland, couldn't understand his intention. But, having witnessed in the Easter Rising in 1916 that the spirit of the nation still survives, he came to conceive a new hope for his homeland. About the heroic deeds done by the patriots killed in that event, he regretted for the bloody violences happened there and enthrallment for their deeds of “terrible beauty” at the same time. Yeats sees that Ireland needs to find its own characteristic culture and identity in order to achieve independence from the hands of England. Guarding against pursuing exclusively what is Irish, he also wants to acknowledge the diversity of culture lying inside the boundaries of Ireland. Stressing that various different cultures are conflicting with one another outwardly, are reciprocal rather than exclusive actually, he seeks the way of hybrid nationalism.

As is well-known, “Under Ben Bulben” is Yeats’s swan song. The last three lines of this poem, “Cast a cold eye / On life, on death. / Horseman, pass by!” is written on the tombstone of Yeats under his command. This epitaph shows that Yeats himself looked life and death in a cold eye. As Yeats believed the regeneration of body and the eternity of soul, he could accept the death of his body serenely, I think. That is because he accepted some main thoughts of Buddhism. Or at least he found some similarity between the Irish thoughts and the Oriental thoughts. This paper focused on examining Buddhist thoughts reflected in “Under Ben Bulben”, though in this poem, there was no word nor phrase indicating Buddhism. There were lots of words and phrases indicating Irish thoughts and Christianity, but nobody can deny that there lay Buddhist thoughts in the background. In conclusion, Yeasts accepted Buddhism and adapted it to his purpose and created his religion.

Building on the readings of Yeats’s esoteric poems and A Vision, I pose to rethink the dimensions of his occultism, more specifically his reflection on an encounter with the supernatural beings. The need for rearticulation of the role of relation to the other gains urgency because the supernatural beings are by nature obscure, indistinct, and indefinite. They resist too much clarification and determination that may reduce their complicated and irreducible beings to distinct concepts. The difficulty, therefore, lies in the question of how Yeats could present the beings in a manner as precise, proper, and rigorous as possible and at the same time he could respect and honor the mode in which the beings conceals themselves in the mystery, by letting them be the mystery that they are. Applying the concept of “ecstasy” and “epiphany” to Yeats’s three poems, my paper investigates how each poem reflects and illustrates the nature and the structuality of “ecstasy” and “epiphany.” In “The Double Vision of Michael Robartes” the girl dancing between a Sphinx and a Buddha in the fifteenth night is the anti-self of Yeats. In a moment the girl, the Sphinx, the Buddha and the poet himself had overthrown time in contemplation. They remain motionless in the contemplation of their real nature. when Robartes meets the girl, he can be a totally subjective mind, overcome the illusion of duality, and find a “revelation of realty.” They finally all integrated into one and accomplish the ultimate reality as a phaseless sphere. This poem Robartes shows how ecstasy or epiphany in an encounter with the supernatural being not only arises from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen but also escapes from the barrenness and shallowness of a too conscious arrangement. In the second section of “Vacillation,” Yeats presents a ritual ceremony in which “Attis’ image” is hung between the two parts, uniting death with eternal life, assuring immortality. He who performs this rite “May know not what he knows but knows not grief.” Yeats in his poetry consistently and repeatedly alludes to an ancient sacrificial ritual and the imitations of ritual techniques through words and rhythms. For him, the ritual enacts an inner vision of permanent beauty and harmony and enables us to participate in the transcendental experience of a rite. Yeats often clearly sees and evokes the effects of sacrifice to ensure symbolize the transcendental vision of whole beyond ordinary experience or expression. Yeats showed Unity of Being in “Byzantium.” He attains the Ultimate Reality completely, in which subject and object are unified in the space without the time. He achieves the ultimate reality as an eternal instant. This ultimate reality is Yeats’s Unity of Being.

In Irish peasant dramas, the political movement for the emancipation of the farmers tended to idealize the rural world, which was made a symbol of Ireland and the new nation. In many of these plays Rutherford Mayne showed his interest in rural Ireland. His concern for agrarian matters was not only an intellectual or artistic one. He articulated his professional experiences with the inhabitants of rural Ireland and the redistribution of the land in his plays. The Troth is an historical play. It tries to evoke the mood of need and misery prevailing in the years of Famine. Several allusions give its setting a definite place in Irish history. The murder just seems to be a passionate act of revenge, disconnected from any effective political movement. The violence in Red Turf springs from a different source: the main character is placed in such a humiliating situation that he loses his patience at the climax of the conflict. In each of Rutherford Mayne’s plays the passionate reaction of the main character springs from circumstances which lie outside his own person and which he believes to be unable to cope with. The different motivations of the violent deeds are reflected in the structures of the two dramas. In the exposition of Rutherford Mayne's plays a situation is lined out which is not dramatic itself: The farmers are about to submit to a menace beyond their power; the cruelty of the landlord in one play and the ruthlessness of acquisitive neighbor in the other. In both plays it is the figure of a neighbor who brings the latent conflict to the surface. Passion and violence create a feeling of suffering which borders on tragedy.

Since he edited William Blake’s poetry, Yeats had been deeply concerned with the questions of “contraries.” And Plato was also an important influence on his theory. Relying on Blake and Plato, Yeats had worked for a long time to make his own theory in his poetry and prose, and succeeded in the elaborate system as elucidated in his book, A Vision. “Among School Children” shows how Yeats has come to reach the ultimate reality, unity of being in the eighth and final stanza in it. Growing older, Yeats gets to contemplate life and death. Earlier in life, he has pursued the spiritual, but as he is older, approaching death, he is searching for something else, too. He realizes that we need both soul and body to overcome aging and death, and eventually, as evidenced in the dance and dancer metaphor of the poem, he is reaching the ultimate Reality through a unity of being－the harmonious union of body and soul. He realizes that “life is not a mere image.”

Blake, Yeats, and Bishop wrote poetry about children from a child’s perspective, to make us take a closer look at our behaviors, thoughts, and society. Both Yeats’s “The Stolen Child” and Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” in Songs of Innocence juxtapose two different worlds, and the child in each poem is associated with the ideal world of our dream. For Blake, the other world as opposed to this world is characterized by perfection filled with love and compassion, which only God can create. Yeats’s “The Stolen Child,” on the other hand, is not characterized by good versus evil; the world we inhabit, though full of sufferings, has traces of beauty that God has given to humanity. Yeats makes us reminisce about our childhood when we were innocent, suggesting that the key to happiness in our daily lives can be found there. Bishop furthers the device of childhood reminiscence with an emphasis on human perceptions, making a psychological approach to her poems, “The First Death in Nova Scotia,” “Sestina,” and “Manners”; hence, the perspective of her child speaker is much more complicated so as to reveal human conditions. We have to find out what the actual world looks like in the poem by inferring what the child gives. Because the psychology of the child is not explained by anyone else in the poem, we place ourselves in child’s perspective and compare the experiences from an adult’s point of view. All the poems about children discussed in this paper are really about adults.

Yeats and Stein are both modernists. The one lived in Dublin; the other lived in Paris. Both revolutionized poetry and novel in their own way. Yeats’s poetry displays the highest degree of form that gives sense of time and space; he relies on tradition to achieve it, whereas Stein invents a totally new way of writing in order to make new sense in prose. This paper attempts to show how to read Yeats’s Meditations in Time of Civil War and Stein’s Tender Buttons. We see Yeats’s poems in it as well woven embroidery in spatial and temporal terms. The more you pay attention to form in his poetry, the more marvelous, sensuous feel of the poems’ texture you have. In the meantime, in different ways than Yeats, Stein’s prose flows like time smoothly, perfectly, like music; if you take time to think, the making of sense is broken; if you just let yourself feel the sensation that the flowing of words and sentences guide you, sense makes sense makes sense, in Stein’s idiom.

Sonnet is a 14-lined poem in the lyric mood whose subject is mainly about love. Heaney experimented the genre of sonnet in his three books: “Glanmore Sonnets” in Field Work “Clearances” in The Haw Lantern and “Glanmore Revisited” in Seeing Things. These three books have two things in common: the poet have changed his style and subject and that they no longer contain the Northern Troubles. Through reading sonnets selected from Field Work, The Haw Lantern and Seeing Things, I came to the following conclusion: the reason the poet adopted the genre of sonnet is that he wanted to write about love, not hatred or violence after he escaped from massacre of Ulster Trouble. And sonnets of three books depict three different kinds of love: love for family, love for landscape and love for writing. The sonnets of Field Work are characterized by the poet's contrary mind: the sense of relief and the sense of sin because he ran out of the massacre, discarding his relatives and his community. Sonnets in The Haw Lantern on the whole, show his filial piety and affection for his dead mom by trying to remember the moment of being together. Seven sonnets in Seeing Things are the recollection of Glanmore where he settled down with his family and wanted to live in peace, escaping from Ulster turmoil. Meanwhile, these sequence of sonnets have some difference: these sonnets have the different tone: humorous or childlike tone in Field Work, elegiac tone in The Haw Lantern and the recollective tone of Seeing Things.