A Brief Introduction
Welcome the Hypertext Project! The following pages constitute a hypertext-style presentation in which I hope to expand upon one of William Butler Yeats' most famous poems, “Leda and the Swan,” using various other works as supplements to help develop a general understanding of the poem as well as a broad analysis of it.
Written in 1924, the poem is settled snugly within what is now recognized as Yeats' “middle period,” in which Yeats began to move away from his more sentimentalist pastoral work and became much more politically conscious, often using his poetry as a sort of link between himself, art, and politics. “Leda and the Swan,” I posit here, is no exception; far from it, in fact. The poem also coincides with the Feminist Movement's First Wave, which began in the late 19th Century in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and which has close ties with Irish independence movement (a movement which highly interested and involved W. B. Yeats). Using the unique format of hypertext, I hope to analyze Yeats' depiction of femininity and womanhood as the focal point by which to analyze the legacy and overall impact of his works and the work of his contemporaries on feminism and femininity in both his time and later in the 20th Century.
Since “Leda and the Swan” is a highly complex poem, situated in many contexts, both historical and literary, and utilizing a wide range of rhetorical devices and techniques, it is an ideal candidate for such a hypertextualization. The non-sequential nature of hypertext makes it uniquely suited to the process of fleshing out a single poem (particularly one of shorter length) into a multitude of branching arguments, contexts and various multimedia representations, which could not otherwise be equally achieved in a formal academic paper, for instance. This allows us to view material from simple analysis, to historical background, to professional contemporary criticisms, to overall legacy all simultaneously in tandem with the poem itself.
For this particular project, I plan to broaden my analysis not only Yeats' “Leda and the Swan,” but also to a few of Yeats' other works, all of which demonstrate his position and ideals of femininity and feminism throughout his life. For the sake of breadth, I will analyze poetry from all of Yeats' established “periods” in order to track these changing and evolving ideals, especially where they intersect with advances in the feminist movement. I will also track Yeats' legacy, analyzing how his works have influenced other writers and artists with particular focus on Eavan Boland's “The Woman Turns Herself into a Fish,” written in 1982.
Many of Yeats works concerning women and/or femininity can be considered hurtful and offensive to feminists, women, and men alike, due to their often inconsiderate, ignorant, or otherwise simply insufficient depictions of these matters. This is of extreme importance during this era, in which the Feminist Movement had only just begun to fully mobilize. Yeats status as the voice of Ireland and Irishness directly impacted this movement, and the content of his poetry generally only furthered the furrow between man and woman at this time. However, Yeats remains a complex poet and writer that simply cannot be taken at face value. His "Leda and the Swan", seen as one of the most overtly gruesome pieces he has ever written, is also one of the most complex. Here I have endeavored to find the keys to unraveling its complexities, with some startling conclusions. Although the poem may offend, Yeats' intent in writing it are obscure and convoluted, and thus the poem may be read in a number of different ways. I posit that his overall intent, as arguably an poet's is, was to unscramble his own prejudices and analyze the turmoil and struggle of his own sociopolitical environment through the lens of Leda's graphic rape which begot what we now know as modern society. "Violence begets violence" is a phrase often used to characterize the struggles of minorities against majority rule, and as an oversimplified reasoning for the actions of others, but Yeats' "Leda and the Swan" take this phrase to new heights and reopens his meaning on both a small and a wide scale.
The analysis of these works will be divided into several types of sections: historical contexts; biographical contexts; literary and artistic links to other works as well as to related authors and artists; literary analysis of the poem's specific rhetorical devices and how they interact with each other and within the poem's content as a whole; legacy in modern works of literature and art; and ties to the feminist movement's development. Each type of section will be labeled for the convenience of the reader, enabling a more comfortable and pointed navigation of the hypertext project.
Where to start: