The Quest for the Ideal: Romantic Escapism in W. B. Yeats’s The Land of Heart’s Desire and Cathleen ni Houlihan

This research paper argues that “romantic escapism” is a recurrent motif in Yeats’s early drama, with specific regard to his two plays – The Land of Heart’s Desire and Cathleen ni Houlihan. The protagonists in both plays share a common romantic escapist attitude despite their mutual differences regarding the reasons beyond their escapism and the nature of the metaphysical ideal world they hope to escape to. They are quintessentially romantic seekers who hope to transcend their painful and boring realities to much more ideal worlds of liberty, immortality, spirituality, and happiness. Therefore, they set out on spiritual journeys, nourished by their romantic limitless imagination, to discover untrodden meta-realities ranging from that of the faeries to that of patriotism and martyrdom with the aim to break free from their mundane, tedious, and malignant physical realities. Through the use of the interdisciplinary approach, the researcher explores these psychological journeys within their social, religious, and political contexts with the aim to examine the theme of “the quest for the ideal” in the two plays under study, pinpointing the form that this theme assumes in each play.