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This guide is an introduction to W. B. Yeats's A Vision and the system of ideas that surrounds it. Although it does not require any prior knowledge of A Vision or Yeats's works, it is written foremost for those who have already examined A Vision—in one or both of its versions—and want to understand it better.
It is constructed to be useful both to those seeking an outline of the work's ideas without too much technical detail, and also to those seeking a deeper understanding with full detail and references. Each chapter has two main parts: a brief introductory overview and a longer, detailed exploration. The sections are numbered for cross-referencing, and quotations reference the main editions of Yeats's works available. Though the profusion of parentheses is essential to the book's function as a guide, it is hoped that readers will be able to ignore them when they are not of immediate interest. Endnotes add a further layer about sources, manuscripts, and debatable points of interpretation.
Reading the first part of each chapter should give a clear enough understanding of the system for readers to approach reading A Vision with some confidence and to plan further study. Symbol systems are webs of relationships and are not easily susceptible to a linear argument. Even so, we must start somewhere, and the material has been organized to unfold as clearly as possible.
Chapters 1, 2, and 3 deal with the context and background to the work, giving a general account of its genesis and form and the traditions from which the Yeatses came to it.
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 take a general approach to the foundations of the system in geometry and thought, in attitudes towards life and destiny, and to the constitution of human beings and their place in the cosmos.
Chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10 look in greater detail at three major elements of the human make-up and at conceptions of the divine.
Chapters 11, 12, 13, and 14 look at how these elements work in the processes of the cycles of life and reincarnation generally, individual lives, existence after death, and the broad trends of history.
Chapter 15 concludes with an assessment of the work's significance. The appendix gives a tabular summary of people and phases.
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