M.A. / The function of the Principles in the system rendered in W. B. Yeats’s A Vision (1937), like most aspects of the system, has received minimal critical and scholarly attention. The reason for this state of affairs is that most Yeats scholars prefer to avoid studying A Vision, for various reasons. The result of this is that little is known of the system. Certain scholars have argued that A Vision is a hoax and an incomprehensible work, which need not be elucidated. The spiritual origin and nature of A Vision are discouraging to critics and scholars, who prefer to interpret the poems that A Vision influenced without referring to the system. This dissertation viewed A Vision as a significant work within the general category of Yeats studies. The system of A Vision is not only useful to interpreting many poems, but is an extraordinary body of work that can be studied in isolation. There is a serious need to elucidate the system, in order to yield more knowledge on this significant aspect of the Yeats corpus. This research aimed at elucidating an important aspect of the system, the function of the Principles. A central premise of the system is that human beings can be classified according to twenty-eight typical incarnations. Every being is set to embody each incarnation. Reincarnation is then central to the system’s account of existence. The primary function of the Principles is to enable an individual being to incarnate, and to pass from one incarnation to the next. Essentially, the Principles are imperative to the system’s exposition on the cycle of reincarnation. To inform its exposition of the Principles, this study delved into the vast body of work produced by the psychical communications, which elucidated the system. These communications are referred to as the Automatic Script. George Mills Harper transcribed the Automatic Script, which was published in the four volumes of Yeats’s Vision Papers (1992). In essence, the Automatic Script is the spiritual and mystical origin of the system rendered in A Vision. For this reason, Yeats’s Vision Papers are crucial to a comprehensive exposition of the system. In addition, this study referred to many of Yeats’s essays on topics ranging from the “ultimate reality” to the Anima Mundi, from the process of symbolisation to the Daimon. Furthermore, various poems were employed to illustrate the importance of the system in interpreting Yeats’s poems. This study defined the state of existence in the transcendent realm, which is imperative to elucidating the function of the Principles in the system. The “ultimate reality” is the source of all incarnate spirits, for this reason it was necessary to describe what is known of this reality. Then the details of the process of incarnation were clarified. The Principles were defined and their functions in the process of incarnation were illustrated. In addition, this study discovered that the Principles do have an effect upon the incarnate being, even though they are passive in life. The function of the Principles during incarnation was elucidated in terms of relation between the Principles and the material Faculties, which are the mediators of the incarnate experience. Scholars who have read A Vision have met the geometry of the system with much aversion. The geometry has been described as flawed and inconsistent. Certain scholars have gone so far as to argue that A Vision makes more sense when the geometry is ignored. This dissertation illustrated that the geometry is imperative to elucidating the system. The geometry is not only necessary to clarifying the system, but aids any attempt to comprehend many aspects of A Vision. Lastly, this study illustrated the function of the Principles in death. The disincarnate states of the soul were explored to illustrate that the Principles define the states between incarnations. Through clarifying the process of death it is clear that, according to the system, existence is characterised by a perpetual return to its point of origin.

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The Celts, as a distinct and culturally-unified people, are a social construction as much as an historical reality, endowing Celtic antiquity with a certain availability of outline, and a certain scope. When the Celtic world began to be scrutinised in the eighteenth century, its borders could, therefore, be filled with concepts drawn from other antiquities. Classical antiquity, and particularly its Greek variety, was a vital coordinate in this navigation of the past. This thesis explores the history of these Graeco-Celtic negotiations. Using Reinhart Koselleck's theory of asymmetric counterconcepts, it calculates the precise angles of the relation between Greek and Celt in antiquarianism, comparative mythology and folklore, Classics and Celtic Studies, from the early eighteenth and to the late nineteenth centuries. The thesis then puts forward one particular writer as an original and unique interpreter of the tradition of Graeco-Celtic relations, the Irish playwright J.M. Synge. Through archival research, it demonstrates quite how deeply Synge was immersed in this scholarly tradition; in the last years of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth, he followed a deliberate path of reading in antiquarianism, Classics, Celtic Studies, comparative linguistics, mythology and folklore. It then argues that Synge transformed such Graeco-Celtic scholarship into a formidable authorial strategy, in his prose account of his travels on the Aran Islands and his famous, controversial plays. By identifying this strategy, it reveals how Synge's work exploits the continued presence and power of antiquity. Most studies of the reception of Greek antiquity in Irish literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries assume a straightforward, inherent connection between Ireland and Greece. This thesis complicates that connection by identifying the powerful history of Graeco-Celtic relations and, particularly, its transformation at the hands of J.M. Synge. This will allow for scrutiny of what actually happens at the crux between Greece and Ireland in literary texts.

One of the most important elements in Yeats' thought is his view of the tragic basis of art. This conception, which can best be called a tragic aesthetic, was developed shortly after 1900 in three prose works--certain fragments of the Samhain publication (1904), "Poetry and Tradition" (1907), and "The Tragic Theatre" (1910). The tragic view developed in these essays became the conceptual basis behind much of Yeats' poetry and therefore played a central role in the direction of his career. This thesis traces the lineaments of Yeats' tragic aesthetic in these early essays, determining its outline in the dreamy, often vague language in which it is expressed, and shows its impact on his poetry from 1904 to the end of his career in 1939.

On its surface, Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men appears to be a thoroughly grim and even fatalistic novel, but read in conjunction with W.B. Yeats' "The Second Coming"—a work with which the novel has a number of intertextual connection—it becomes clear that there is a distinct optimism at the heart of the novel. Approaching McCarthy's novel as an intertext with Yeats' poem illuminates an apparent critique of eschatological panic present in No Country for Old Men, provided mainly through Sheriff Bell's reflections on the state of society.

Love and growing old are thematically inseparable in W.B. Yeats' poetry, yet it is the former with which this great Irish poet is often associated. The poet's attitudes toward aging are made clear through his symbolism, complicated Irish allusions, and a sometimes jarring treatment of women. As it turns out, these devices have as much to do with Yeats' concern over aging as they have to do with the infamous Maud Gonne. This thesis attempts to not only expose and analyze these intricacies, but also challenge the way the literary canon typically isolates Yeats’ more famous poems without the context of his other work.