Leda and the Swan Summary & Study Guide

This Study Guide consists of approximately 11 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Leda and the Swan.

Leda and the Swan Summary & Study Guide

This Study Guide consists of approximately 11 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Leda and the Swan.
This section contains 189 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy the Leda and the Swan Study Guide

Leda and the Swan Summary & Study Guide Description

Leda and the Swan Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to help you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:

This detailed literature summary also contains Quotes and a Free Quiz on Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats.

“Leda and the Swan” is a 14-line Petrarchan Sonnet written by William Butler Yeats. It was originally published in The Dial in June, 1924, and was included that year in a collection of poetry by Yeats entitled The Cat and the Moon and Certain Poems. However, Yeats revised the poem several times. Its final version appeared in 1928, in his collection The Tower. The poem is based on a story from Greek myth, in which the Greek god Zeus takes the form of a swan in order to rape the Spartan Queen Leda. This union conceives Helen, whose beauty provokes the Trojan War.

The poem refers to Yeats’s theory of history, which he saw as a series of cycles that move towards violent turning points. The Trojan War represented one such turning point to Yeats. The poem thus uses Leda to explore questions of free will and human agency, depicting her rape as a moment she also possessed the god’s “power” (13) to bring about such historically consequential events. However, the poem doubts that Leda had the omniscience to understand what would follow from that moment.

Read more from the Study Guide

This section contains 189 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy the Leda and the Swan Study Guide
Copyrights
Gale
Leda and the Swan from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.