Self-Sacrifice as an Unwelcome Gift: Subjectivity and Individuality in W. B. Yeats’s Calvary

This paper analyzes Calvary with the focus on Yeats’s ideas of subjectivityand individuality. The play is part of the Four Plays for Dancers (1921). It was inspired by Oscar Wilde’s prose poem “Doer of the Good” (1894) and the formaltechniques of Japanese Noh Theatre. The paper examines both the continuities and discrepancies between Oscar Wilde and Yeats in their spiritual and aesthetic affiliations and Yeats’s use of Christian imagery, iconography, and narrative related to his system of Subjective-Objective antinomy. In exploring the theme of subjectivity, the debate between Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida that centers on the idea of hospitality is deployed to explain the relationship between the Christ figure and the other characters in the play.