Yeats’s Mythology/Mythologies and Lady Gregory’s Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland

Abstract

Yeats and Lady Gregory worked together to gather Irish folk stories but Lady Gregory treats the stories as folk stories while Yeats makes full use of the stories in his own ways in his own creations, such as poetry, stories, plays, and essays. The mythology in Yeats’s work serves as the backdrop of what he is to develop; and as a result when he talks in his poem, he does not have to explain anything but his direct relevance of the literary significance and beauty of art and life. The reader is just to concentrate on what he hears and sees in a particular work, without having recourse to any longer presentation of the background of the work. It is a key to the brevity and density of Yeats’s work. He is different from most earlier writers, whether they are great or minor. Yeats, however, makes full use of mythology. It is a kind of shorthand for Yeats in Ireland, as some writers, not many, do, in Korea and elsewhere, which is great.