Mythical Elements In Yeats' Poems

1735 Words7 Pages
Mythical elements in The Second Coming, No second Troy and Leda and the Swan Himanshi Sharma B.A. (Hns.) English- III Year Miranda House, DU. W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) is a modernist poet who was located in the Irish Revolution (1922-23). The Irish Revolution was the struggle of the Irish nationals for independence from the British imperial power. The Irish Revolution brought upon a situation of turmoil and uprising as the young generation wanted to break out from the English regime. However, the revolution led to a state of chaos and disorder, thus leading to a disjuncture between the young revolutionaries and the older generation of The Irish Society. Yeats, however, maintained a very liberal position while writing about the revolution in his poems. He does not offer any solution but offers to provide an unbiased view of the contemporary strife in the society. According to G.S. Fraser, In the bitter and violent Ireland of his (Yeats) time, the Ireland of heroes, fanatics, assassins, rebellion and civil war, Yeats was always, for all his grand romantic airs, a moderating influence, a humanising influence; it might almost be said a liberal influence. He hated barbaric waste and destruction.’ Yeats portrayed this disjunction in the society in his verses through the use of the myths. He effectively uses the structure and the ability of the myths to change in the socio-cultural contexts to question the preconceived notion about revolution and the association of divinity with the fight for Motherland. Yeats tries to recreate the past through the myths and legend of the people which would have still resonated in the memories and beliefs of the people. They had a ‘direct ancestral magic’ for him. This paper aims to look at the use of myths in three of the Yeats’s poems – “The Second Coming”, “No Second Troy” and “Leda and the Swan”. Yeats uses the concept of myth
Open Document