ABSTRACT
Yeats and his shadow are one of the most closely scrutinized pairs in contemporary
literary history. The meaning and significance Yeats gave to the entity by which he was
constantly pursued and with which he held frequent colloquy have been held under the
critical microscope, and the shadow has emerged alternately as the course of human
history, the poet's alter-ego, his inner self, the natural man, or as anything that Yeats
wanted but believed himself not to be. In spite of the wealth of tags given to Yeats's dark
extension, one very important aspect of the shadow has been neglected. Yeats, as all poets
inevitably are, was pursued by the poets who came before him, the writers whose
compositions he read, admired, and reflected upon. Yeats's shadow is also, then, the
poetic past composed of the many writers with whom he reckoned and dealt in his attempts
to define his own poetic nature and character.
