When H. P. Blavatsky, the controversial head of the turn of the century movement Theosophy, defined "a true Theosophist" in her book The Key to Theosophy, she could have just as easily have been describing W. B. Yeats. Blavatsky writes, "A true Theosophist must put in practice the loftiest moral ideal, must strive to realize his unity with the whole of humanity, and work ceaselessly for others." Although Yeats joined Blavatsky's group in 1887, and subsequently left to help form The Golden Dawn in 1890, Yeats's career as poet and politician were very much in line with the methods set forth by Blavatsky's doctrine. My project explores how Yeats employs this pop-culture occultism in the creation of his own national literary aesthetic. This project not only examines the influence theosophy has on the literary work Yeats produced in the late 1880's and 1890's, but also Yeats's work as literary critic and anthology editor during that time. While Yeats uses theosophy's metaphysical world view to provide an underlying structure for some of his earliest poetry and drama, he uses theosophy's methods of investigation and argument to discover a metaphysical literary tradition which incorporates all of his own literary heroes into an Irish cultural tradition. Theosophy provides a methodology for Yeats to argue that both Shelley and Blake (for example) are part of a tradition that includes himself. Basing his argument in theosophy, Yeats can argue that the Irish people are a distinct race with a culture more "sincere" and "natural" than that of England.

The Theosophical Society (est. 1875 in New York by H. P. Blavatsky, H. S. Olcott and others) is increasingly becoming recognized for its influential role in shaping the alternative new religious and cultural landscape of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century, especially as an early promoter of interest in Indian and Tibetan religions and philosophies. Despite this increasing awareness, many of the central questions relating to the early Theosophical Society and the East remain largely unexplored. This book is the first scholarly anthology dedicated to this topic. It offers many new details about the study of Theosophy in the history of modern religions and Western esotericism. The essays in Imagining the East explore how Theosophists during the formative period understood the East and those of its people with whom they came into contact. The authors examine the relationship of the theosophical approach with orientalism and aspects of the history of ideas, politics, and culture at large and discuss how these esoteric or theosophical representations mirrored conditions and values current in nineteenth-century mainstream intellectual culture. The essays also look at how the early Theosophical Society's imagining of the East differed from mainstream 'orientalism' and how the Theosophical Society's mission in India was distinct from that of British colonialism and Christian missionaries.

This book presents an in-depth study of the influence of Indian philosophical and religious thought on W.B. Yeats’s poetic and dramatic work. It traces the development of this influence and inspiration from Yeats’s early impressionistic work to the mature and elaborate incorporation of Indian ideas into the structure, themes and symbolism of his writing. It recognizes the importance of his Indian friendships, Indian essays, and shows the limits of his Indianness. While providing a comprehensive analysis of Yeats’s poetry and his bizarre poetic play, The Herne’s Egg, from an Eastern perspective, the book examines how Indian philosophical concepts guided Yeats in constructing his characters, imagery, and symbology, and in shaping the structure of his dramatic narrative. Yeats’s liminal positioning between Orientalism and Celticism, Irish nationalism and British imperialism, and his heterogenous literary aspirations and modernist poetic idiom are probed and explored in order to position him on a pendulum of postcolonial debate. The focus in this book is on the aesthetic appreciation of the parts of Yeats’s creative opus where he engaged with Eastern thought, with genuine interest and enthusiasm, when the pendulum swings towards Yeats being a mythopoetic and anticolonial writer.

... The author traces 'the history of the soul' as it is developed in Yeats's plays.

Includes a special section on teaching Yeats

Yeats and Women is a special issue of the distinguished Yeats Annual series and is the first collection of essays upon W.B.Yeats to focus upon his relation to women. Its critical and biographical approaches employ feminist and psychoanalytic theory, and social anthropology. The seventeen plates (many hitherto unpublished) include the tomb and coffin of Maud Gonne's first child, Florence Farr's occult Egyptian shrine, and the last photograph of Yeats.

W. B. Yeats is widely regarded as the greatest English-language poet of the twentieth century. This new critical biography seeks to tell the story of his life as it unfolded in the various contexts in which Yeats worked as an artist and as public figure.

Yeats and Women , published originally in the Yeats Annuals series, collects eight essays on Yeats's relationships with women, two collections of letters to him and his broadcast, 'Poems about Women'. The essays cover sexuality and its dynamic in Yeats's writing: his attitude to feminism and to the 'feminist occult'; his relationships with Maud Gonne, Dorothea Hunter, Olivia Shakespear, Florence Farr, Iseult Gonne and George Yeats. Yeats's relationship with Lady Gregory and her co-authorship of Cathleen ni Houlihan is analysed. The collection includes 12 plates.

This book explores the question of Yeats’s identity as an important issue in the criticism of the Irish poet. The identity of the poet with the advent of postcolonial theory into Irish studies in general and Yeats’s studies in particular, this controversial issue has gained new dimensions. Whether Yeats was a revolutionary and anti-colonial nationalist or a poet with unionist and colonialist inclinations has been the subject of much debate and less agreement. One can justify any of these versions of Yeats by concentrating on some of his works and utterances and ignoring some others. However, this will result in an incomplete and partial picture of a complex, multidimensional, and ever-changing poet such as Yeats. It explores the different aspects of W. B. Yeats’s poetic theory and political ideology. It also studies Yeats’s modernity and influences on his contemporaries as well as successors, such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and W. B. Aden. Though three common themes in Yeats’ poetry are love, Irish nationalism and mysticism, modernism is the overriding theme in his writings. Yeats started his long literary career as a romantic poet and gradually evolved into a modernist poet. As a typical modern poet, he regrets the post-war modern world, which is now in disorder and chaotic tuition and laments the past.

Yeats Annual No. 11 has four broad themes: W.B. Yeats's written and oral poetic technique; his philosophical interests in Eastern thought and A Vision; his manuscripts: and Jack B. Yeats's work, including his illustrations for his brother's writing. The contributions include: Michael Sidnell on Yeats's 'Written Speech'; Helen Vendler on Yeats and Ottava Rima; Steve Ellis on Chaucer, Yeats and the Living Voice; P.S. Sri on Yeats and Mohini Chatterjee; Matthew Gibson and Colin McDowell on A Vision and the automatic script; Wayne Chapman on the 'Countess Cathleen Row' of 1899 and revisions to the play; Warwick Gould and Deirdre Toomey on The Flame of the Spirit; Hilary Pyle on Jack B. Yeats's Illustrations for his Brother; John Purser's edited transcript of Jack Yeats and Thomas MacGreevy in conversation. There are shorter notes by Morton D. Paley, A.Norman Jeffares, Lis Pihl and others. Fourteen new books are reviewed and the nine plates include hitherto unpublished images.