Yeats Imagined Ireland and Postcolonial Theory

In the light of various authoritative definitions of the word ‘culture’, such as those expressed by Edward Said and Raymond Williams, the present paper investigates W.B. Yeats’ idea of Irish culture and explores the poet’s position regarding several crucial concepts which would eventually be taken up in ground-breaking studies of post-colonial theories, such as the ‘invention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983), ‘imaginary/invented countries’ (Kiberd 1995) and the ‘un-homed condition of the artist’ (Bhabha 1994) in a post-colonial / post-modern society. This paper intends to explore the often confusing and misleading use of fixed notions like ‘culture’, ‘identity’ and ‘tradition’ when employed to describe complex systems, and to show Yeats’ conscious and deliberate or culture-bound use of such terms in his own definition of Irish culture.