The Wind Among the Reeds, written from 1889 to 1939, is regarded as one of the most remarkable poetry collections of William Butler Yeats. It altogether includes 80 poems touching upon several themes such as love, rel...The Wind Among the Reeds, written from 1889 to 1939, is regarded as one of the most remarkable poetry collections of William Butler Yeats. It altogether includes 80 poems touching upon several themes such as love, religion, dignity, and life. Yeats is one of the most distinguished Irish poets throughout the world, whose works perfectly embody the incorporation of romanticism, modernism, and occultism. It is noteworthy that in some of his poems, animals are portrayed frequently or even taken as the title of a poem, such as bird, fish, swan and so on. Therefore, this essay attempts to study the meaning of animal images of this poetry anthology in terms of different writing phases of Yeats. Firstly, the author builds the corpus of The Wind Among the Reeds and employs corpus search software Ant Cone to check the number and distribution of the animal image. Next, the author focuses on certain prominent images and investigates them further by analyzing the concordance lines of them. Thirdly, according to the result of distribution information, the author also attaches importance to the phenomenon of image combination in the poetry and then explores its function and effect. To conclude, by exploring the animal image in The WindAmong the Reeds, a deeper understanding of the poetry and the writing style of the poet will be gained on another level. What is more, a more direct and objective data is provided through the method of corpus and its relevant software, thereupon a new research approach is introduced.展开更多
文摘The Wind Among the Reeds, written from 1889 to 1939, is regarded as one of the most remarkable poetry collections of William Butler Yeats. It altogether includes 80 poems touching upon several themes such as love, religion, dignity, and life. Yeats is one of the most distinguished Irish poets throughout the world, whose works perfectly embody the incorporation of romanticism, modernism, and occultism. It is noteworthy that in some of his poems, animals are portrayed frequently or even taken as the title of a poem, such as bird, fish, swan and so on. Therefore, this essay attempts to study the meaning of animal images of this poetry anthology in terms of different writing phases of Yeats. Firstly, the author builds the corpus of The Wind Among the Reeds and employs corpus search software Ant Cone to check the number and distribution of the animal image. Next, the author focuses on certain prominent images and investigates them further by analyzing the concordance lines of them. Thirdly, according to the result of distribution information, the author also attaches importance to the phenomenon of image combination in the poetry and then explores its function and effect. To conclude, by exploring the animal image in The WindAmong the Reeds, a deeper understanding of the poetry and the writing style of the poet will be gained on another level. What is more, a more direct and objective data is provided through the method of corpus and its relevant software, thereupon a new research approach is introduced.
