Dancing Bodies and Gender Politics in Middle Yeats＇s Works

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Title:	Dancing Bodies and Gender Politics in Middle Yeats＇s Works 葉慈中期作品中的舞動身體與性別政治
Authors:	Yi Jen Lee
Contributors:	嘉南藥理科技大學應用外語系
Keywords:	dance gender W.B.Yeats 舞蹈性別葉慈
Date:	2011-12
Issue Date:	2012-06-08 10:11:49 (UTC+8)
Abstract:	Situating William Butler Yeats in the milieu of the rising early modern dance, this paper examines the dancing bodies and gender politics in middle Yeats’s works, such as in his plays On Baile’s Strand (1904) and The Only Jealousy of Emer (1919), and other poems. Whe ther mythological, legendary, or human, middle Yeats’ dancers represent an oppositional force to rigid notions of nationality, gender, and religion, just as early modern dancers combat against the physical constraints of classical ballet and Victorian conceptions of pure womanhood to liberate the female body. This aesthetic and ideological rebellion inevitably provoked antagonistic reactions among various patriarchal institutions that perpetuated the myth of pure domestic womanhood to ensure their operation. For instance, Irish patriarchs in On Baile’s Strand view the Sidhe dancers as threatening to their political establishments and laws; to exorcize these marginal forces and ward them securely outside patriarchal society, the forefathers devise an elaborate ritual to “blow the witches out.” Yeats further dramatizes the power struggle between human women and the Sidhe in his play The Only Jealousy of Emer where Cuchulain’s wife Emer and his mistress Eithne band together against the bird-woman-witch dancer, Fand. The power struggle between these three women provides a locale for us to examine Yeats’s gender politics in relation to the various women’s movements of the early-twentieth century. Yeats, in befriending and writing about the dancers, partook in dialogues that often revealed him as a supporter of women dancers’ artistic achievements and of their proto-feminist outlook 將葉慈放置於現代舞的早期發展環境中，本文旨在探討葉慈中期作品中的舞動身體和性別政治，如他的戲劇『在巴利的海灘』（1904 年）和『艾瑪的唯一嫉妒』（1919 年），以及其他詩作。無論是神話，傳說，或人類，中期葉慈的舞者代表了與僵化的國籍，性別，宗教觀念對立的力量；正如早期現代舞者反抗古典芭蕾的身體限制和維多利亞時期的純女性概念，以解放女性的身體。這種美學與意識形態的反抗不可避免地引起父權機構的敵對，以確保其純家庭女性神話的永久運作。例如，『在巴利的海灘』中愛爾蘭族長視精靈舞者為其政權和法律的一種威脅;為要驅除這些邊緣的力量，並將他們排除於父權社會之外，這些族長制定詳細的儀式，以“趕走女巫。＂葉慈在『艾瑪的唯一嫉妒』中進一步戲劇化人類女性與精靈舞者之間的權力鬥爭；可呼蘭的妻子艾瑪和他的情婦艾絲妮聯合對抗鳥-女人-女巫舞者，芬德。這三位女性的角力戰提供了一個場域，讓我們審查葉慈的性別政治與二十世紀早期的婦女運動的關聯。與舞者為友並寫作舞者的葉慈，在不斷地參與對話中，展現出他支持女性舞蹈者的藝術成就和其女性主義觀點。
Relation:	嘉南學報(人文類) 37期：p.486-499
Appears in Collections:	[Chna Nan Annual Bulletin] No.37 (2011) [Dept. of Applied Foreign Languages] Periodical Articles

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