DESIRE ON THE ROAD: A PSYCHOANALYTICAL READING OF “THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE” AND “STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING”

G. M. JAVED ARIF

doi:10.53808/KUS.2023.20.02.988-ah

Authors

G. M. JAVED ARIF English Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna-9208, Bangladesh

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53808/KUS.2023.20.02.988-ah

Keywords:

Poetry, literary theory, psychoanalytic criticism, Freud, desire, symbol

Abstract

W. B. Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and R. Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” contain various kinds of similarities and dissimilarities in several ways. Both the poems can be analyzed in order to explore how the poets are exploiting symbols in order to reveal the speakers’ dream states, how the speakers are moving between conscious and unconscious states of mind, and how their ids, egos, and superegos are working in relation to the desires in their minds. In order to examine all these related issues that the poems embody to thrill their readers, the relevant literary theory is psychoanalysis. A comparative study of these two poems using Freudian psychoanalytic criticism reveals that in both the poems, the poets/speakers are not only somehow on the road, but they are also constantly engaged in handling their desires which are hard to satisfy, yet difficult to repress. Desire in both Yeats’s and Frost’s poems appears to be overwhelming and always in the process of satisfaction though satisfaction finally seems unachievable. Such a psychoanalytic reading can help the readers appreciate these two poems in a new light.

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