To What Extent and in What Ways Do Post-War Modernist Writers Engage with Myth in Their Work?

To what extent and in what ways do Post-war Modernist writers engage with myth in their work?

A myth can most simply be understood as a ‘traditional story or set of stories having a significant truth or meaning for a particular culture.’ However mythic structure theory goes further in asserting universal concepts of life and death cycles. The intersecting historical and cosmological aspects of myth are emphatically taken hold of in T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats’ poetry. In many ways, their poetry becomes a palimpsest of ancient and primitive myth. This considerably widens their temporal frame and generates meaning further than their poetry in isolation. In turn, a relationship is developed that offers literary comparison and contrast. Myth does not only provide form to their poetry, but also plays a significant ideological role. Post-war modern society lacked a consistent metaphysical view of man, leading to a widespread questioning of confidence and collapse of known values. Amidst this climate, Yeats and Eliot turned to myth as a source of illumination. This essay will concern how myth is used as a formal device and epistemological principle to come to terms with the atmosphere of post-war Europe in ‘The Wasteland’, ‘The Second Coming’ and ‘Leda and the Swan’.

As a spokesman for Irish nationalism, Yeats’ poetry sought to ground cultural identity for the Irish nation. He uses classical mythology from an idealized past as an imaginative template to interpret the cataclysmic political events of his time. In ‘Leda and the Swan’, he refigures Zeus’ rape of Leda, an act of violence that engenders Helen of Troy. In this way, the poem has an intertextual relation to later classical mythology, such as the narrative concerning Troy’s destruction. Yeats’ decision to publish the poem in the political journal ‘Dial’ in 1924 encourages a reading that stresses a parallel between the violence done to Leda and the newly formed Irish Freestate. Consequently, Yeats’ portrayal of...