The Unification of Memory and Phantasmagoria in the Philosophical Poems of W. B. Yeats’s the Wild Swans at Coole
Abstract
This paper studies the unification of phantasmagoria and memory in the philosophical poems included in The Wild Swans at Coole. The multiple facets of Yeats’s phantasmagoria can be traced in various forms in different poems due to its being extensive. Its vivid presence can well be noticed in the elegies, personal love lyrics, and philosophical poems of The Wild Swans at Coole. Yeats speaks of the significant role of phantasmagoria in the preface to this collection of poems, for the poet, according to him, never speaks directly and there is always a phantasmagoria involved. The term phantasmagoria can be regarded as a key concept in Yeats’s The Wild Swans at Coole the theme of questing truth and discarding persona after persona finds expression in the selected philosophical poems of this study. Consequently, a deep interpretation of the philosophical poems of this collection necessitates a close study of the images and symbols embedded in the involved phantasmagoria.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18415/ijmmu.v12i5.6764
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