William Butler Yeats: The Hidden Nationalism

Abstract

W.B. Yeats the famous Anglo Irish poet and dramatist was accused of a lack of sense of nationalism. His achievements in the reviving of the Irish culture as a means to establish a dependent Irish identity was regarded with suspicions simply due to his being a descendant of Anglo -Irish origins.In this light, the study comes to shed light on Yeats’ tremendous achievements concerning his sense of nationalism and his role in the reviving Irish culture. Also, the study aims at refuting the charges against Yeats which considered him as a representative of the colonizer’s class. Finally, the study proved that Yeats revealed a mature vision of nationalism which most of his contemporaries failed to notice since they only focused on one aspect of Irish identity and neglected the other; in discussing the Irish question, they were either politicians or culturalists. Whereas Yeats shows a higher degree of awareness as he believed that establishment of an identical distinctive Irish identity must be done with having both the cultural and the national elements united in one word that is “Irishness." His national creed is rooted in a kind of cohesion between culture and nationalism. It is this conclusion that not only refuted the charges againstYeats’ nationalism but also put him in a position superior to any other Irish Nationalists.