RECIPROCAL RITUAL: THE FUNCTION OF WOMEN IN THE IMAGINATION OF W. B. YEATS. (IRELAND)

W. B. Yeats conceived a progression of Masks which
he placed upon women he knew and presented as images in
his poetry. Between the mystical Rose and Dancer images
of his early and late work occur three Masks of flesh and-
blood women--the Muse-goddess, the Duchess of Urbino,
and the Audacious Old Woman. In relation to each of these,
Yeats assumes a Mask of his own--the Poet-lover, the
Courtier, several Old Men--and establishes a ritual
relationship by which he dramatizes the opposing tensions
he believed to exist between men and women . These tensions
lie in oppositions of will, intellect, and creative genius.
Yeats's ideal--ultimately unrealized--was to achieve
complement, co-creation, and, finally, perfect union in
the male-female relationship.