Leda and the Swan Analysis Essay

William Butler Yeats is one of the most esteemed poets in 20th century literature and is well known for his Irish poetry. While Yeats was born in Ireland, he spent most of his adolescent years in London with his family. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he later moved back to Ireland. He attended the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and joined the Theosophical Society soon after moving back. He was surrounded by Irish influences most of his life, but it was his commitment to those influences and his heritage that truly affected his poetry. William Butler Yeats’s poetry exemplifies how an author’s Irish identity can help create and influence his work.

As and introduction to Heaney poems, I will use a poem of Yeats, who is the poet that starts to talk about postcolonial themes. Maybe Yeats was one the most important figures in the reconstruction of the Irish identity. He represents the relationship between Ireland and Britain in his poem "Leda and the Swan". The first publication of this poem was in the radical magazine "To-morrow" in 1923. Some years later it was republished in the

The composition called The Swan performed by Yo-Yo Ma, the poem called The Dying Swan by Alfred Lord Tennyson, and the ballet of Le Cygne (The Swan) by Anna Pavlova connected to each other clearly and meaningfully by describing how The Swan’s experience connects to human being’s life cycle. The compositions musical elements connect to the poem because it starts with a depressing and miserable sound as how the poem starts in the first stanza. Then, the composition gives an inspiring emotion to the listener as how the poem gives inspiration to the reader. Furthermore, the composition also connects to the ballet because it follows the rhythm and melody of the composition by creating a dance that expresses an aching heart over people dying, peace of the deceased, and it inspired people to accept death as the dying swan accepted its own death. The ballerina shifted her speed with the tempo of the music symbolizing the meaning and feeling of the poem. The composer’s choices were effective in creating such a dramatic moment because the composition, ballet, and poem flew along as they instilled a mournful and content joy causing a death confronting inspiration.

Throughout our lives, we will all experience the occurrences of political and cultural changes. How we cope with this alteration can set our paths for the near or far future though it may not be clear at the time. In the autobiography Assignment Rescue a man by the name of Varian Fry voluntarily goes to Europe to try to help the men and women on Hitler’s list escape. Regardless of the dangers he set out to help. In the book Wild Swans three generations of women have their experiences told. Each one of them deals with political and cultural changes particularly with women. Finally the Novel Things fall apart focuses on a man named Okonkwo who throughout the stories suffers from the aggressive cultural changes brought upon by the Christian European

Moreover, the neoclassic usage in this work is striking. For instance, in the last stanza by employing the word nymph this is a direct reference to the mentioning of Daphne and a Delphic god in the previous stanza; a mythical tale in

      These mythological elements are thoroughly enmeshed within the structure of the poem; the image of fire springs up several times, the figure of death roams the City, and the general notion of the City as a terrible prison or place of horror is consistently conveyed.  Therefore, we can use the poem's mythological basis as a springboard into several different readings of it.

The relentless rivalry between passion and reason is a captivating conflict that often becomes the crux of innumerable pieces of literature. Admirably, the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and the poem Bright Star by John Keats are renowned because the quarrelling emotions and judgements in characters evokes empathy in the reader as this conflict typifies a timeless theme. In light of the fact that the novel and poem share a common theme, it is evident that the story told in the poem mirrors how Darcy’s affections for Elizabeth compete with the standards of his immediate society. Undoubtedly, the lines, the diction, and the different literary devices of Bright

John Keats was a famous lyric poet during the Romantic period; in fact, most of his poetry revolves around vivid imagery (“John Keats Biography,” para. 1). After reading Keats’ Lamia, readers learn that Keats is portraying a tragic love story—story about Lamia and Lycius. Readers learn that Lamia undergoes a unique transformation—from a serpent to a woman. Lamia and Lycius live in a fairy tale world—an unseen world. Nonetheless, Lycius wants to marry Lamia; however, his old tutor appears at the wedding feast and recognizes that Lamia is human—her true nature. After the truth is revealed, Lamia disappears, and Lycius dies. Therefore, after reading Lamia, one can claim that readers should have sympathy for Lycius, mainly because he lost the love

Poetry is often meant to be smooth, flowing, pleasing to the ear and the mind. To achieve this effect, many poets use different poetic techniques to help convey the meanings of their poetry. In the sonnet, 'Yet Do I Marvel' written by Countee Cullen, many different features of poetry is used. In this essay, I will discuss the relationship between the meanings and the theme Cullen tries to convey in his sonnet and the techniques of metaphors, both religious and non-religious, allusions to Greek mythology, different rhyme schemes and repetition that he uses.

Since the composition Il bianco e dolce cigno means the sweet white swan, the sound quality of this particualr piece reminded me Swan that was composed by Romantic composition Swan by Saint-Saens. One way by trying to make this piece match wit the description of the piece is by readjust the slur in the composition. Even though the piece itself was very syllabic but in order to create that smooth flow and gesture of the swan, in my arragement I add in more slur between phrases in order to showcase the elegent sound of the swan and try to put some romanticism in the composition. Similar to the Swan that was composed by saint-saen, both piece contain elements that share the similar character. As Roche said “...this madrigal illustrate a

The poem Leda and the Swan, written by William Butler Yeats, attempts to shed new light on what is arguably one of Ancient Greece's most controversial myths. In this essay I aim to study the poem in more depth, analysing what Yeats says and how he says it. Leda and the Swan is an interpretation of the Greek myth wherein Zeus, in the

When describing society, the author uses allusion and states, “Anarchy is loosed upon the world.” Yeats explores the suffering of death that the human race is dealing with and a depiction of how war has done nothing but make life more difficult. Allusion is shown when the author illustrates there is so much death that, “the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere.” The author is also claiming how the war would just create more war, and that helps weaken society. In stanza two, the narrator describes a man as, “A shape with a lion body and the head of a man.” This depiction is symbolic of mankind because men are so full of themselves that they believe they

In the poem “Leda and the Swan” by William B. Yeats, many connections to historical events, mythology, and biblical themes are presented. A few such connections that are highly analyzed and debated by critics are the connections and allusions to Greek history and mythology that occur in the poem — including the nature of the sexual act committed — and parallels to Christianity, such as the Holy Spirit visiting Mary: the two subjects connected by Yeats’s own theories on history and the passage of time.

Losing all touch with the finer consciousness of the age it would be, not only irresponsible, but anemic” (Foster, 441). In the poem “Three movements,” the poet observes that “Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land; / Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand; / What are all those fish that lie gasping on the strand?” (Finneran, 240) Yeats is neither detached Shakespearean fish, nor credulous Romantic fish; he is the fish that “lie gasping on the strand,” and the volume The Winding Stair and Other Poems is his struggle with the crisis of his age, both the age of the poet (nearly 70 at the time) and the age of the world (1930s).

The British sonnets “To Sleep” and “Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace”, written by John Keats and Sir Phillip Sidney respectively, contain many similarities and a few distinct differences. They both are about the act of falling to sleep and the many beneficial thing that come from sleeping. Both of these sonnets are also very moving in their exquisite use of an assortment of literary techniques. However, these sonnets differ in the tone in which they are written, the speed at which they are intended to be read, and their rhyme scheme. The British sonnets “To Sleep” and “Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace” are very similar in their subject matter and use of literary techniques, but are quite different in their tone, designed reading speed and rhyme scheme.