Rites and Rhymes

Nally, Claire (2023) Rites and Rhymes. In: The Oxford Handbook of W. B. Yeats. Oxford Handbooks . Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 414-428. ISBN 9780198834670, 9780191882593

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Abstract

This chapter considers the influence of Golden Dawn and Rosicrucian ritual on William Butler Yeats’s early poetry and prose, including The Secret Rose (1897) and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). Through his creation of the Castle of Heroes, an invented mystery religion, Yeats experimented with ideas of death and rebirth more commonly associated with A Vision (originally published 1925). However, in exploring Yeats’s early work through the lens of ‘continuing bonds’ derived from grief theory, this chapter suggests that early Yeats was engaged in an act of ancestral reclamation, through the intersection of occultism and fairy lore.

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