W. B. Yeats and the Quest for Order

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Hamdi H. Al-Douri

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to explore Yeats’s quest for order and how this quest found expression in his works. Throughout his life, Yeats was dissatisfied with the religious, artistic, political, anthropological and intellectual aspects of life, in both Ireland and England which have taken away from modern man the sense of order. His father's skepticism, his dissatisfaction with the spiritless religion of his time, a religion which seems dead and his sense of alienation at school among British students were behind his ceaseless search for alternative orders which became the preoccupation of all his life and triggered his [] engagements in numerous nationalistic, occult, and mystical societies which he joined early in his life. Among the societies he joined was the Balvatsky Lodge of the Russian lady Madam Balvatsky through which he came into close contact with the occult. One of the most important societies he joined and presided was the occult society the Golden Dawn. This paper, therefore, sheds light on his quest for nationalist, intellectual, philosophical, and mystical orders and how this is reflected in his poetry. The paper attempts to explore this quest for order selected poems such as "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", "The Second Coming", "Leda and the Swan", "Sailing to Byzantium" and some other poems together with reference to his philosophical book A Vision. However, the dominating quest in Yeats's poetry is his quest for a mystical order which can be traced in almost all his poetical works.

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How to Cite
Al-Douri, H. H. (2020) “W. B. Yeats and the Quest for Order”, Koya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 3(1), pp. 53-58. doi: 10.14500/kujhss.v3n1y2020.pp53-58.
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Author Biography

Hamdi H. Al-Douri, Department of English, College of Education for Women, Tikrit University, Tikrit, Iraq

Hamdi Hameed Al-Douri, is professor of English literature at Tikrit University, Salahaddin, Iraq. He has taught at the Teachers Training institutes, College of Education and Women College. Chairman of the Department of English at Women College (1999-2007). He was a visiting professor at Koya University, Sulaimani University and Garmian University.  He has supervised nine Ph.D. and thirty M. A. students of English literature at six universities in Iraq and abroad. He has published 29 papers in academic journals and participated in more than 20 academic conferences in Iraq and abroad. He is Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Language Studies (An international academic journal published by Tikrit University), 2017 till the present.

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