A FORMALIST APPROACH TO W.B.

YEATS’ LEDA AND THE SWAN

W.B. Yeats’ Leda and the Swan was written in 1923, the peak of Yeats’ writing career.

The formalist approach is used to analyze the poem to show its form, the devices used, tone and

meaning. The sonnet form in poem is traditionally about romance and love; Yeats’ ironically

used this form to highlight the irony in the poem’s meaning which is about brutal rape. It is a

retell of the classic Greek mythology Leda, a human woman, is impregnated by the god Zeus

while he is in the form of a swan. Formalism is an approach of studying the literary text based

solely on its style and form disregarding the outside influences – having mainly to do with the

text’s structural purpose, rhyme scheme and poetic form. It focuses on the importance of the

literary form and less likely on the details of the poet’s life and the text’s period or historical

context. Leda, the helpless human victim, represents Ireland and the Swan represents Britain

which is also based on Zeus. W.B. Yeats based the poem on the ancient Greek mythology in

which the mighty Zeus takes the form of a swan to make love to Leda, a human and the wife of

Tyndareus, King of Sparta, who also happens to lay with her that very night Zeus raped her.

Leda and Swan

W.B. Yeats, 1923

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl; her thigh caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

 How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Leda and the Swan is a sonnet which is a type of a poem consisting of fourteen lines (of

eleven syllables in Italian, generally twelve in French, and ten in English), with rhymes arranged

according to one or other of certain definite schemes, of which the Petrarchan and the

Elizabethan are the principal, Petrarchan Sonnet. (Oxford Reference) The Petrarchan, or Italian

sonnet, consists of an octave (eight lines) or two quatrains and a sestet of six lines or two tercets. 

There are two major forms of the sonnet and one minor form. They all contain 14 lines.

Traditionally, sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter is a rhythmical

pattern and is the template or pattern for a sonnet's poetic line. The "iambic" part means that the
rhythm goes from an unstressed syllable to a stressed one, as happens in words like divine,

caress, bizarre, and delight. The "pentameter" part means that this iambic rhythm, which is a

"foot," is repeated five times. (Marsico, L. n.d) A sonnet originally has 14 lines and Leda and the

Swan has 14 lines but one of which is split, officially it has 15 lines. It has a clear separation

between the first eight lines which is the octave and the final six lines called sestet. The rhyme

scheme of the Leda and the Swan is ABAB CDCD EFGEFG and is mostly in the rhythm of an

iambic pentameter; and has five stresses in every line which reflects the violent action in the

poem. This distinct break between the two parts of the Petrarchan sonnet, sometimes called the

turn, encourages the poet to present a subject in the octave and reflect on it in the sestet. In some

sonnets these two parts take on the qualities of a proposal and a response or a problem and a

resolution. Frances Mayes says that the sestet "resolves or consolidates or reflects on the

concerns of the octave." (Mayes, p. 313) The subject of the poem must lend itself to this kind of

resolution in order for the form to fit. The sestet part of the Leda and the Swan is the conclusion

which is also called as the Volta or the turn of the thought or an argument where the previous

lines are answered.

The first stanza opens with an act of violence and passion which uses imagery with the

details of the sexual assault on Leda. The first line has five stresses which reflect the violent

impact of the swan as it assaults the helpless woman. The use of imagery and symbols give more

definition to what the poem means. There is a use of enjambment where a line flows into another

without a punctuation and with the sense maintained as the action continues. Enjambment, from

the French meaning “a striding over,” is a poetic term for the continuation of a sentence or

phrase from one line of poetry to the next.  An enjambed line typically lacks punctuation at its

line break, so the reader is carried smoothly and swiftly—without interruption—to the next line
of the poem. (Richter, J. n.d) Caesura is the pause found in the middle of the line as the physical

act takes place. The use of alliteration is shown in the fourth line: He holds her helpless breast

upon his breast. This is the repetition of the same letter or sound within nearby words. Most

often, repeated initial consonants. (Silva Rhetoricae) In the poem, he used “h” and “br”. The first

stanza has a transition which most readers would doubt the meaning of the poem. The first line

expresses violence but the fourth line describes a romantic act usually done by most couples.

This shows that Zeus is a violent and sinister god but disguised himself into a pure white swan to

cover his dark intentions.

W.B. Yeats wrote Leda and the Swan in the sonnet form to put an ironic contrast in the

traditional theme of the sonnet which is romance. Instead of romance and love, he wrote about

rape, seduction and impregnation as a metaphor for the relationship between the Great Britain

and Ireland. In the Greek mythology, Leda represents the humans or the entire human world that

the Swan, represents the gods, looked down on and manipulated their lives.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Burton, G.O. Silva Rhetoricae . Brigham Young University. Retrieved from

http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/A/alliteration.htm

Marsico, L. (n.d) Studying the Sonnet: An Introduction to the Importance of Form in

Poetry. Retrieved from

https://teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/viewer/initiative_05.01.11_u

Poetry Foundation. Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats. Retrieved from

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43292/leda-and-the-swan

Richter, J. (n.d) What is Enjambment? || Oregon State Guide to Literary Terms. Retrieved

from https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-enjambment