Rhetorical Figures in Leda and the Swan

1337 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: W. b. yeats as a symbolist

Rhetorical Figures in Leda and the Swan

"Leda and the Swan," a sonnet by William Butler Yeats, describes a rape. According to Perrine, "the first quatrain describes the fierce assault and the foreplay; the second quatrain, the act of intercourse; the third part of the sestet, the sexual climax" (147). The rape that Yeats describes is no ordinary rape: it is a rape by a god. Temporarily embodied in the majestic form of a swan, Zeus, king of the gods, consummated his passion for Leda, a mortal princess (Perrine 147). The union produced two offspring: Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife. In recounting this "momentous rape" with "large consequences for the future," (Perrine 147) Yeats uses rhetorical figures in each of the sonnet's three stanzas.

The figures in the first stanza create tension and portray the event. All definitions for the rhetorical figures mentioned in this essay are derived from Lanham's A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. Yeats opens with an example of brachylogia, brevity of speech. His elliptical fragment, "A sudden blow," recreates the stunning impact and tension of the assault. The poet uses alliteration in the form of consonance: the plosive "b" first found in "blow" subtly batters the ear throughout the quatrain--"beating," "bill," and "breast," which occurs twice; the initial "g" found in "great" echoes in "girl"; and an initial "h" repeats in "her," which occurs three times, "he," "holds," "helpless," and "his". Yeats ends the first line with "beating still," an example of anastrophe, a kind of hyperbaton, the unusual arrangement of words or clauses within a sentence, frequently for poetic effect. The figure not only creates tension through arrangement but also throug...

... middle of paper ...

...idled sexual passion, the coexistence of power and wisdom in human life, and the potential for combining youthful vitality and passion with mature knowledge and wisdom.

Works Cited

Lanham, Richard A. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. 2nd ed. Berkeley: U of California P. 1991. 1-161.

Perrine, Laurence. Instructor's Manual to Accompany Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. 4th ed. New York: Harcourt. 1983. 147-48.

Yeats, William Butler. "Leda and the Swan." Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. 4th ed. Ed. Laurence Perrine. New York: Harcourt. 1983. 636

The Spiritual Marriage of Maud Gonne and W.B Yeats

(excerpt from Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses by Mary K. Greer--an account of Yeats's fascination with the beautiful Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, who inspired his greatest poetry and plays))

Show More
Related

  • Antigone

    1762 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Norton Introduction to Literature. W.W. Norton and Company: 1998.

    Read More

  • Death Ushers Grief in “Whoever We Are, Loss Finds us and Defines Us” by Anna Quindlen

    849 Words  | 2 Pages

    Palmer, William. "Rhetorical Analysis." Discovering Arguments: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, Writing, and Style. Boston: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2012. 268-69. Print.

    Read More

  • The Heroism, Divine Support, and Greek Unity Displayed in the Persian Wars

    2236 Words  | 5 Pages

    In early fifth century BC Greece, the Greeks consistently suffered from the threat of being conquered by the Persian Empire. Between the years 500-479 BC, the Greeks and the Persians fought two wars. Although the Persian power vastly surpassed the Greeks, the Greeks unexpectedly triumphed. In this Goliath versus David scenario, the Greeks as the underdog, defeated the Persians due to their heroic action, divine support, and Greek unity. The threat of the Persian Empire's expansion into Greece and the imminent possibility that they would lose their freedom and become subservient to the Persians, so horrified the Greeks that they united together and risked their lives in order to preserve the one thing they all shared in common, their "Greekness".

    Read More

  • Comparing Pride in A Good Man is Hard to Find, Good Country People and Revelation

    973 Words  | 2 Pages

    Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.

    Read More

  • The Life of William Butler Yeats

    960 Words  | 2 Pages

    “William Butler Yeats.” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 09 May 2014.

    Read More

  • Social Slights

    704 Words  | 2 Pages

    Anderson, Robert, et. al. Elements of Literature: Sixth Course. Austin: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1989. Print.

    Read More

  • Combined Experience of Suffering, Death and Love all at Once

    1547 Words  | 4 Pages

    "John Keats." British Literature 1780-1830. Comp. Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1996. 1254-56. Print.

    Read More

  • W.B. Yeats and History Essay

    1719 Words  | 4 Pages

    In these lines from "All Things can Tempt Me" (40, 1-5), Yeats defines the limitations of the poet concerning his role in present time. These "temptations" (his love for the woman, Maude Gonne, and his desire to advance the Irish Cultural Nationalist movement) provide Yeats with the foundation upon which he identifies his own limitations. In his love poetry, he not only expresses his love for Gonne, he uses his verse to influence her feelings, attempting to gain her love and understanding. In regard to the Nationalists, he incorporates traditional Irish characters, such as Fergus and the Druids, to create an Irish mythology and thereby foster a national Irish identity. After the division of the Cultural Nationalists, Yeats feels left behind by the movement and disillusioned with their violent, "foolish" methods. He is also repeatedly rejected by Gonne. These efforts to instigate change through poetry both fail, bringing the function of the poet and his poetry into question. If these unfruitful poems tempt him from his ?craft of verse,? then what is the true nature verse and why is it a ?toil? for the poet? Also, if Yeats cannot use poetry to influence the world around him, then what is his role as a poet?

    Read More

  • The National Health Services

    2177 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...are immense, as it has only finite resources to use, but needs its services to be clinically effective as well as able to meet the needs of individual’s, their choice of preferences and be value for money. To accomplish this NHS will need to harness more securely its investment in surveillance, analysis and budgets, and therefore establishing a framework that would than serve and provide a better health outcome to the entire nation. Lastly, UK spends about half of what is spent by the US (about 14 % of GDP) on its healthcare, yet in US out of 250 million over 30 million citizens are still without health care provision. Thus, despite such a massive expenditure by US government, failure to provide basic health care to millions of its citizen is not overcome, however, that is certainly not the case in UK (Bilton, et al., 2002; Christopher, 2004; Smith I. , 2007).

    Read More

  • Comparing The Eve of St. Agnes and Romeo and Juliet

    2100 Words  | 5 Pages

    Keats, John. “The Eve of St. Agnes”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic

    Read More

  • Hiv / Aids : A Manifestation Of Poverty

    748 Words  | 2 Pages

    By the year 2000, 58 million people have been infected by HIV/AIDS and alarming numbers such as 22 million would have already died. And the epidemic continues to spread. HIV/AIDS historically is considered to be one of the longest running worldwide epidemics that we have ever seen, and figures cannot be placed on the true death tolls or estimation of the damage as the cycle still is yet to reach an end (Whiteside 2002). With Africa being the worst hit continent in the world in terms of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the severity of it’s prevalence; one can only begin to question whether HIV/AIDS and poverty and directly connected or the inter-linkages exacerbate one or the other. This paper aims to argue that HIV/AIDS is a manifestation of poverty, and simultaneously poverty contributes to growing HIV/AIDS epidemic. Development in response both to poverty reduction and to HIV/AIDS is complicated when both have multi-dimensional and multi-faceted impacts on a society, whether it be social, economic or human development impacts. This paper will argue that pre-existing socio economic conditions within a country such as high levels of poverty, poor sanitation, malnutrition, environmental degradation and poor public healthcare systems and limited access to preventative care are crucial factors in contributing to the transfer of the infection (Pasteur: 2000, Mann: 1999).

    Read More

  • W.B. Yeats' Adam's Curse

    1779 Words  | 4 Pages

    Though written only two years after the first version of "The Shadowy Waters", W.B. Yeats' poem "Adam's Curse" can be seen as an example of a dramatic transformation of Yeats' poetic works: a movement away from the rich mythology of Ireland's Celtic past and towards a more accessible poesy focused on the external world. Despite this turn in focus towards the world around him, Yeats retains his interest in symbolism, and one aspect of his change in style is internalization of the symbolic scheme that underlies his poetry. Whereas more mythological works like "The Shadowy Waters" betray a spiritual syncretism not unlike that of the Golden Dawn, "Adam's Curse" and its more realistic fellows offer a view of the world in which symbolic systems are submerged, creating an undercurrent of meaning which lends depth to the outward circumstances, but which is itself not immediately accessible to the lay or academic reader. In a metaphorical sense, then, Yeats seems in these later poems to achieve a doubling of audience, an equivocation which addresses the initiate and the lay reader simultaneously.

    Read More

  • The Collected Poems of WB Yeats

    1604 Words  | 4 Pages

    This book is a collection of the poetry, drama and essays that have been written by Yeats. The importance of this book is that it does not only make known the major contributions in poetry, drama, prose fiction and autobiography, but also criticisms which have been leveled at Yeats and these works. The criticisms herein are elaborate, taking a volume of 24 interpretative essays which have been written by different seasoned authors and poets such as Douglas Archibald, Lucy McDiarmid, Thomas Parkinson and Daniel Albright, among others.

    Read More

  • Stevenson and Conrad: The Duality of Human Nature

    955 Words  | 2 Pages

    English Literature. By Stephen Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams. 8th ed. Vol. 2. New York:

    Read More

  • Use of Dramatic Contrast in Yeats' Poetry

    726 Words  | 2 Pages

    Yeats' poetry is very dramatic because he usually creates dramatic contrasts within his poems and because his tone changes regularly. When he wasn't in conflict with the world around him he was in conflict with himself. He was never satisfied with modern Ireland, even when he was younger. As he grew older, his dissatisfaction became even greater.

    Read More

More about Rhetorical Figures in Leda and the Swan

Open Document