W. B. Yeats’s “A Vision”: Explications and Contexts is the first volume of essays dedicated to A Vision and the associated system developed by William Butler Yeats and his wife, George Yeats. A Vision is all-encompassing in its stated aims and scope, covering the nature of reality, the spiritual constitution of the human being, human life and afterlife, and the great trends and cycles of history. It invites a wide range of approaches, as demonstrated in the fourteen essays collected here, written by the foremost scholars in the field. After a preface outlining critical treatment of A Vision an ... More

W. B. Yeats’s “A Vision”: Explications and Contexts is the first volume of essays dedicated to A Vision and the associated system developed by William Butler Yeats and his wife, George Yeats. A Vision is all-encompassing in its stated aims and scope, covering the nature of reality, the spiritual constitution of the human being, human life and afterlife, and the great trends and cycles of history. It invites a wide range of approaches, as demonstrated in the fourteen essays collected here, written by the foremost scholars in the field. After a preface outlining critical treatment of A Vision and Yeats’s occult interests over the years, the first six essays present explications of major themes in A Vision itself: the system’s underlying structure; incarnate life and the Faculties; discarnate life and the Principles; how Yeats relates the ideas to other concepts in philosophy; and his consideration of the historical process. Three further essays look at key elements of importance to the work: the divine and the Thirteenth Cone; astrology in the automatic script; and poetry within A Vision. The final five consider its context, in terms of collaboration and influence—between husband, wife, and spirits, or with another poet—or the gender perspective within these interrelations, the historical context of Golden Dawn occultism or the broader political context of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. Illustrated with over thirty figures and diagrams, the book has a full glossary of the Yeatses’ idiosyncratic terminology and an index.