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ISSN : 1226-4946(Print)
ISSN : 2288-5412(Online)
The Yeats Journal of Korea Vol.31 pp.209-225
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.14354/yjk.2009.31.209

Historical Change and Violence: An Understanding of W. B. Yeat's “Leda and the Swan”

Huh Hyun Sook

Abstract

Yeats began his career as a poet elaborating the Celtic legends and storiesabout the life and politics of the Irish people: Irishness was a source of his poeticinspiration. Later he moved to formulations that complicated his own attitudestoward his contemporary politics in Ireland and caused misunderstanding of hisworks among his readers. Because he emphasized violence embodied in the strugglesof political conflicts and historical events. For Yeats, history steps to another stagewith violence. In other words, he focused on the violent moment in historicalevents. In describing the process or movement of memorable event in history hedistances himself and keeps his views or judgments on it with ambivalent words.He does not support for or oppose to the only one side in the political event, toshow his interest in the significances of the moments. Thus he is far from thepassionate politics in his contemporary Ireland. Rather he sees the violence as apower to change in history, as his poem "Leda and the Swan" shows. In the mythof Leda and Zeus he reads the destructive act of rape on Leda by Zeus within theframe of destruction of the nation-state. And Yeats focuses on Leda's tragicexperience with powerful and violent Zeus as an event toward the violent and tragichistory afterwards. In short, he shows the violence as one committed to change inthe history of a state.

역사적 변화와 폭력: 예이츠의 「레다와 백조」(“Leda and the Swan”)에 대한 이해*

허현숙
건국대학교

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