W.B. yeats a symbolist

Abstract

W.B. Yeats was one of the greatest poet of the 20th century and recipient of the Nobel prize. Yeats has been called the chief representative of the symbolist movement in English Literature. Yeats used symbols prominently in his poems. This resulted from William Blake's influence, who had his own elaborate symbolism system and was someone Yeats revered and studied. Yeats is considered to be the finest poet of his time, which may be seen as a transitional period between Swinburne and T. S. Eliot, William Morris and Ezra Pound, and he was largely responsible for the smooth transition. He spoke with a unique, original authority and had his own perspective on man and the world. Yeats was no mere imitator however he used Symbols towards incredibly ambitious ends to reconcile binaries in pursuit of a unity of being. Innumerable are the symbols that Yeats employs, in many cases the same symbols being used for different purposes and in different contexts. This research paper aims to flashlight the symbolism used by W. B. Yeats and beautiful handling of these symbols in his different poems.