YEAT'S ARTIST PICTURE OF RAPE

"Leda and the Swan" is a sonnet written by William Butler Yeats. The subject matter is taken from one of the many stories in Greek mythology. The swan is the god Zeus in disguise. He forces himself on Leda and because she had also had sex with her husband, the Spartan king Tyndareus, she becomes pregnant with four fetuses. The most important of these offspring on the development of the Western civilization is Helen of the Trojan War. A close study of "Leda and the Swan" reveals how Yeats turns the violent rape into a work of art.
The sonnet is a traditional fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. The structure is Petrarchan with a clear division between the first eight lines and the final six. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFGEFG. There is no irony in the fact that the dividing line is the orgasm, the "shudder in the loins."
Each section begins with a bold phrase that summarizes the event. ‘A sudden blow' initiates the octave and ‘a......

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Title: Leda And The Swan
Approximate Word Count: 524
Approximate Pages: 3 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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