At the beginning of the twentieth century, England was at the peak of prosperity both in economy and political affairs. This was the great age of imperialism. However, some great foreseers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler and Mathew Arnold sent warnings against the spiritual status of European people who had lost the religious faith for Christianity. W. B. Yeats also lost his faith for Christianity and came to believe in occultism in his youth. Ireland was under the rule of the British Empire. The political movement for the independence of Ireland which had been under way since the end of the eighteenth century bacame furious at the beginning of the twentieth century. Yeats committed himself in the movement together with his love Maud Gonne. An upheaval of the First World War brought the material and spiritual devastation to European societies, and people came to be conscious of the fall of the western civilization. Yeats' "The Second Coming", T. S. Eliot's "Gerontion", The Waste Land and "The Hollow Men" were born out of such a social unrest. As a result of the Industrial Revolution which appeared in the late of the eighteenth century England, industrial cities were born here and there, and in the minds of European people varous spiritual conflicts such as loneliness, alienation or absurdity came to the face of the society. As the European mind began to face the challenge of the nineties, the supremacy of rationalism and positivism which were the great guidelines of intelligentsia in the neneteenth century Europe was progressively brought into question. The art of Modernism appeared in such a social background. I would like to examine how greatly that age had influenced upon Yeats and how could he accomplish the task as a poet in this cultural and artistic background from the viewpoint of occultism, the Civil War and the modernist movement.

identifier:http://hokuga.hgu.jp/dspace/handle/123456789/1286