To Be Redone
I admit that I do not know much about postmodernism and romanticism to do a thorough analysis; however, Dr. Jerz said to write about it in our blogs so here it goes. I recognize the mores simplistic form of writing in Wordsworth and Yeat's poems as the description of Wordsworth states. For instance, Wordsworth gets straight to the point in "The Tables Turned" when he says, "Up! Up! my Friend, and quit your books"(1). I can only imagine how Shakespeare would get the same point across in his writing. Besides the simplistic form, Yeat's poem, "Leda and the Swan" caught my attention most out of all the poems as being the most different. This poem describes a woman being raped by a swan. Is this poem a sonnet? If so, sonnets seem to be common in all eras; however, I would assume writing about this topic was a new and rare occurrence until the postmodern time.
I will be either updating or rewriting this entry after class today because I know it is terrible so far being that I do not completely understand postmodernism.
Leda and the Swan isn't a sonnet, so far as I can tell, and the topic itself isn't exactly new. The story it tells is from Greek mythology. Zeus disgused himself as a swan in order to rape Leda. His children by her were Helen (the chick with the "face that launched a thousand ships," whose rescue was the objective for the Trojan War and Pollux, who is one of the twins in the Zodiac constellation Gemini (the other is his twin who was somehow the son of Leda's husband...apparently the Greek understanding of embryos was limited). So anyway, while the style of telling is definately new for the time, the story itself is pretty old.
It was most controversial in the way it relates to Christianity, as this old Greek story of a god impregnating a mortal, and inevitably leading to war and destruction, seems to run in parallel to the Christian story of God impregnating Mary, and the birth of Jesus who would also lead to some wars....including the Crusades, some of which ironically took place fairly close to Troy.