A Re-Reading of W. B. Yeats's Poems on Nature

Abstract

W. B. Yeats, due to his Romantic leanings, has been understood as creating a transcendental Arcadia in his poems on nature. Nevertheless, Yeats’s pastoral scenery, aligned with other Western metaphors of nature such as Eden, Arcadia, and the Garden, conveys feelings essentially different from tragic escapism. Interestingly enough, his proto-ecological imagination echoes a parallel with the “nature-centered” worldview of Korea’s Joseon period. Thus, I shall not merely identify East-Asian cultural traces in Yeats’ lyric poems, but I also propose to examine how Yeats’ aesthetic appreciation of nature echoes Joseon-Korea’s Ghangho poetics.