A study of literary and philosophical influences on W. B. Yeats

Abstract

In the field of English literature, William Butler Yeats is the greatest poet and the connection between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is a multifaceted person who is a lyric poet, a shaman, a mythologist, and a romantic. He is a poet with a political agenda (to a small extent); a poet with a prophetic outlook and mystic philosophy; and a poet with expertise of dramaturgy experiments. The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of India and Hinduism on Yeats and his poetry. It claims that Mohini Chatterjee spiritually and aesthetically inspired Yeats and initiated him into mysticism. Later, Yeats' spiritual journey was fueled by his encounters with Indian monk Purohit Swami and Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.