This paper discusses perfectionist writers W. B. Yeats and James Joyce. To compare how they worked slowly and creatively toward completing a work, I take two works by Yeats and Joyce, two of their best works. Yeats tends to work on his poems and plays continuously, even after they have been published. This paper looks at the rewriting of “Leda and the Swan” in several different stages, in order to see how the poem gather intensity and art, as an exemplification of what he did as a literary artist. Yeats’s attitude toward art and his literary style can be compared to the traits of art, and his literary style can be compared to that of the young artist depicted in A Portrait. In fact the young artist Stephen can be seen as Joyce the artist, and the paper discusses Stephen who grows linguistically and artistically competent. Yeats and Joyce are not merely Romantic writers; they were determined to develop new art and bring it to the highest perfection. And indeed they have achieved it in their works respectively.

• Rhee, Beau La(한국외국어대학교)