예이츠는 전통적 시 형식을 고수하였다. 그럼에도 불구하고 무운시의 형식은 다른 형식에 비해 드물게 사용하였다. 그의 초기와 중후기의 대표적인 무운시를 통해 무운시의 율격과 그 다양한 변용의 양태를 살펴보고 시의 내용과 주제에 미치는 효과를 알아보고자 한다.

Yeats rarely wrote free verse, which was new and very popular in the early 1900s. He used various traditional rhymed verse, but interestingly he wrote not so many blank verse in view of the considerable number of his poems. In this article, first, Yeats’s idea about blank verse is examined based on his essays and letters, and then the characteristic aspects of poetic diction, syntax, tone and regular and irregular meters in alternate lines of his blank verse are studied in such poems as “Ephemera,” “Ego Dominus Tuus,” “In the Seven Woods,” and “The Second Coming.”

• 주미란(단국대학교 교양기초교육원) | Meeran Joo