What this thesis attempts to do is to render as full a picture as possible of Yeats's interest in Ben Jonson, using to the fullest advantage the many hints that come from Yeats and secondary oriticism. Specifically, the focus of this paper is on the process by which Yeats was able, like Eliot, Pound and others, to found a tough, new poetic style with reference to this seventeenth-century period of Jonson. Yeats's reading of "Jonson and the others," which took place at the turn of this century, triggered a whole series of discoveries by Yeats which anticipated the aesthetic beliefs of his famous friends in the modern movement, whose later influence upon his poetry generally fortified poetic principles which had already found their way into his work. His early plays for the Abbey Theatre, for instance, demonstrate his call for a return to the "roots" of poet ic power that Synge associated with the best plays of Jonson and Moliere, and his poetry of that period demonstrates his first attempt at finding the "passionate syntax" of Jonson, Donne, Shakespeare and others.

In my kennismaking met die poësie van Yeats en Roland Holst het ek onvermydelik opgemerk dat hulle sekere simbole ooreenkomstig gebruik, dat hulle dieselfde hoë, aristokratiese waardes handhaaf en gevolglik 'n afkeer het van die moderne massa-demokrasieë. Later het ek ontdek dat albei digters sterk in die Keltiese mites en sages belang gestel het en dat Roland Holst Yeats as 'n belangrike invloed eien. Dit alles, en die feit dat hulle albei enkele gegewens uit die Griekse mitologie daarby voeg in wat hulle "mites" word, het my voorgekom as goeie rede vir 'n vergelykende studie. So 'n ideë-studie het egter gedreig om iets heel anders te word as die literêre beskouing wat ek beoog het. Geleidelik het dit egter geblyk dat die mite méér moet wees dan die ideë-sisteem; en juis dit waardeur die mite meer is dan ideë-sisteem het die belangrikste regverdiging geword vir 'n vergelykende studie, en terselfdertyd, vir 'n toespitsing van die aandag op die poësie.