Rhetorical Figures in Yeats’s

"Leda and the Swan," a sonnet by William Butler Yeats, describes a rape. According to Perrine, "the first quatrain describes the fierce assault and the foreplay; the second quatrain, the act of intercourse; the third part of the sestet, the sexual climax" (147). The rape that Yeats describes is no ordinary rape: it is a rape by a god. Temporarily embodied in the majestic form of a swan, Zeus, king of the gods, consummated his passion for Leda, a mortal princess (Perrine 147). The union produced two offspring: Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife. In recounting this "momentous rape" with "large consequences for the future," (Perrine 147) Yeats uses rhetorical figures in each of the sonnet's three stanzas.

The figures in the first stanza create tension and portray the event. All definitions for the rhetorical figures mentioned in this essay are derived from Lanham's A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. Yeats opens with an example of brachylogia, brevity of speech. His elliptical fragment, "A sudden blow," recreates the stunning impact and tension of the assault. The poet uses alliteration in the form of consonance: the plosive "b" first found in "blow" subtly batters the ear throughout the quatrain--"beating," "bill," and "breast," which occurs twice; the initial "g" found in "great" echoes in "girl"; and an initial "h" repeats in "her," which occurs three times, "he," "holds," "helpless," and "his". Yeats ends the first line with "beating still," an example of anastrophe, a kind of hyperbaton, the unusual arrangement of words or clauses within a sentence, frequently for poetic effect. The figure not only creates tension through arrangement but also through anticipation of rhyme. The first quatrain consists of a periodic sentence, a sentence in which the sense is not completed until the end, and this creates more tension.

Thus far, the figures enumerated evoke the tension of the event; however, other figures help characterize Zeus and Leda. Yeats uses synecdoche, substitution of part for whole, to portray the god and the girl. The god is seen as "great wings," "dark webs," "bill," and "breast"; Leda is viewed as "thighs," "nape," and "helpless breast." The poet's use of synecdoche creates a type of enargia, characterismus, a description of the body or mind.

Yeats not only continues ellipsis, consonance, synecdoche, and characterismus in the second quatrain but also introduces new figures. A second ellipsis, a missing "not help" between "rush" and "But," occurs in the latter part of the quatrain. Yeats continues the consonance of "b"--"body," "but," "beating," and "h"--"how," "her," "heart." He creates new echoes with the consonance of "f"--"fingers," "feathered," "feel"--"l"--"loosening," "laid," "lies." Yeats extends his synecdochic descriptions of the god and Leda: in the second quatrain Yeats describes the god as "strange heart" and Leda as "terrified vague fingers," "body," and "loosening thighs." The continued use of ellipsis, consonance, and synecdoche heightens tension and aids characterization in the sonnet; however, new figures help carry the poem to its conclusion.

The repetition of "how can" at the beginning of successive deliberative verses exemplifies anaphora, carrying back, and the backward movement creates more tension. Yeats deliberates an issue: Leda's inability to fight off the god physically and emotionally. His deliberation exemplifies aporia, being at a loss or deliberation about an issue. While Yeats considers the impact of the transformed god's passionate act, he uses other figures to further describe the god's transformation and action. The poet's use of the descriptive phrase "the feathered glory" rather than the proper name "Zeus" typifies antonomasia, the use of an epithet instead of a proper name. The epithet further masks the transformed god who Yeats describes as parts rather than as a whole being. The term Yeats uses to describe the god's assault, "white rush," is not only a metaphor but also a euphemism for the "momentous rape" (Perrine 147).

In the third quatrain, Yeats employs some of his previous figures and introduces still more figures. Consonant "b" continues in "broken," "burning," "being," "brute," "blood,"