Yeats Crazy Jane and Jakobson s Metaphor and Metonymy

Yeats poetry proves to be peculiarly open to the structuralist dichotomy between metaphor and metonymy. Although poetry more naturally tends to fall into the metaphoric category and prose, especially the realism employed in novels, is more metonymic, all languages oscillate between these two poles. However, here in this article, I will endeavor to indicate that though the overall framework of Yeats s poetry is undeniably metaphoric, close textual analysis will reveal it to have strong metonymic tendencies. By shifting through these two poles, his poetry gains its significance and becomes more complex and more complexly meaningful. The metonymic associations and links which exist in Yeats poetry, though slight, are strong enough to prevent it from degenerating into a heap of chaotic metaphors. Just as the tension between a binary opposition of self and soul enriches Yeats poetry thematically, the tension between metaphor and metonymy enriches it stylistically and structurally. In other words, these two figures (metaphor and metonymy) form one of the basic binary oppositions which can give structure to Yeats poetic system. To elucidate Jakobson s metaphor and metonymy more concretely in Yeats s poetry, I would focus on the character of crazy Jane whose appearance in some poems creates a chain of poems in Yeats poetry.