Intercultural “Marriages” and Their Refractions in W. B. Yeats’s Work

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Pages: 55-63
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/IYPK6914

Abstract:

The relationship between England and Ireland and the historical premises for their “familial” interaction at the beginning of the twentieth century were a major concern to the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The fantasy of the intercultural “marriage” between “masculine” England and “feminine” Ireland, which had been part of a wide variety of nineteenth-century texts, was interpreted by the poet from an aesthetic perspective. Basing his aesthetic vision on Celtic mythology, Yeats employs a variety of strategies of representation in his work to construct a Celtic(ized) image of Ireland. By alluding to its mythical and epic stature in the past, he aims at re-awakening it for a new life in the present. This article attempts an exploration of Yeats’s strategies and practices of aestheticization and his mediation between past and present.

Keywords:

William Butler Yeats; intercultural “marriage;” centre and periphery; Celtic mythology; mythopoeia; aestheticization; mediation between past and present

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