Swans and Contradictions in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats

• Thesis title in Czech: Labutě a rozpory v poezii W. B. Yeatse
• Thesis title in English: Swans and Contradictions in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats
• Key words: W. B. Yeats|William Butler|moderní irská poezie|romantismus|modernismus|Maud Gonne|labuť|The Wild Swans at Coole|The Tower
• English key words: W. B. Yeats|William Butler|modern Irish poetry|Romanticism|Modernism|Maud Gonne|swan|Divoké labutě v Coole|Věž
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2015/2016
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Mgr. Daniela Theinová, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 16.05.2016
• Date of assignment: 18.05.2016
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 25.05.2016
• Date and time of defence: 20.06.2017 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 18.05.2017
• Date of proceeded defence: 20.06.2017
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: doc. Justin Quinn, Ph.D.

Guidelines

Yeats’s 1919 collection The Wild Swans at Coole marked a transition in his poetry: from early songs rooted in Romanticism, the poet moves towards a style influenced by Modernism. Even though it is beneficial to examine Yeats’s work in relation to the two major literary movements of the time, it is necessary to bear in mind that his stance towards both remained problematic.
This stylistic ambiguity is apparent in the collection’s title poem and its central paradox: the poet’s depiction of swans contains aspects of Romanticism and Modernism alike, yet resists clear classification. Furthermore, swans feature here not only as poetic symbols, but also as physical bodies. Similar contradictory tendencies appear in Yeats’s “Among School Children” and “Leda and the Swan.” These late poems from The Tower (1918) link the animal with its symbolic and physical features to the Greek myth. The swan as a beautiful, seducing rapist in “Leda and the Swan” also prompts a feminist reading addressing the dichotomy between the poet and woman as object, a theme abundantly explored in Yeats’s work. My thesis would show how swans embody the aforementioned contradictions in the poems and how, to a certain extent, all of them combine the three conflicts.
First, I would offer a close reading of “The Wild Swans at Coole,” referring to studies of Romantic and Modernist aspects in Yeats’s poetry. Then I would contrast the idea of swan as symbol with Yeats’s emphasis on the bird’s physicality. This passage would require a focus on biographical data, including Yeats’s own observations and the incidents that gave rise to these poems. Lastly, I would focus on the role of Leda in The Tower and on how this role defines the complexity of the swan image and the poems’ perspective. By grounding my thematic study in three overlapping critical approaches (the feminist and the biographical approach alongside references to studies of Yeats’s relationship with various literary movements), I hope to gain the advantage of several viewpoints supporting a single – structural – assumption.

References

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