Abstract

This dissertation considers the poetry of Yeats in light of the work of the philosopher Nietzsche and of the Cambridge Anthropologists, specifically the correspondences between their tragic theories and Yeats's relation to them. ;Yeats's theory of tragedy reveals strong parallels with that of Nietzsche. It is in Yeats's conception of the hero that the parallels are strongest. The poet's notion of a man, passionate, willful and free, thus able to create himself, finds analogy with Nietzsche's Uebermensch, that being who possesses a powerful will with which he masters his weaknesses so as to become a model to other men. ;Since Yeats and Nietzsche position man to be a hero and to fill the role created by God's absence, he possesses abundant possibilities. The psychological distance from the fully realized individual to the hero is not so great; each willfully disciplines himself to surpass his human limitations. That man most able to do this, that "exceptional being," attains heroic status. ;This study also explores Yeats's findings in the work of the Cambridge Anthropologists, and their application in his verse. This group of comparative mythologists investigated the origin of tragedy in its pagan roots, before its Aristotelian incarnation. They looked at tragedy in relation to man, as a religious and mythic rite. Their view of the hero challenged the classic Aristotelian one. The hero assumed divine status; he is man turned god, divinity incarnate in human form which dies and is perpetually resurrected in the sectors of the tragedy. ;The unseemly conjunction between Yeats and these two schools of thought might raise questions about the validity of this discussion, but the similarities point to an area rich in comparisons. Both Nietzsche and the Cambridge Anthropologists share a historical perspective. They published at relatively the same time. Both were interested in the origin of tragedy, its ontology, and its manifestation in primitive rituals. Yeats, by turning to pagan and Celtic myth, demonstrated a similar interest in the origin of tragic art. That they both found their way into Yeats's thought and work, provides the rich convergence which this study investigates