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Discourse analysis versus philosophic reading of a literary text: The herne's

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Discourse analysis versus philosophic reading of a literary text: The herne's

egg, W.B. Yeats
Snežana Dabić a
a
Faculty of Further Education, Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE, Preston, VIC, Australia

Online publication date: 30 March 2010

To cite this Article Dabić, Snežana(2010) 'Discourse analysis versus philosophic reading of a literary text: The herne's egg,
W.B. Yeats', Critical Discourse Studies, 7: 2, 113 — 125
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 Critical Discourse Studies
Vol. 7, No. 2, May 2010, 113 –125

Discourse analysis versus philosophic reading of a literary text:

The herne’s egg, W.B. Yeats
Snežana Dabić∗

Faculty of Further Education, Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE, Melbourne, 77–91 St Georges Road,
Preston, 3072 VIC, Australia

This study explores a unique poetic narrative from two perspectives: a sociolinguistic point of
view within the framework of functional discourse analysis and a literary critique through the
prism of Indian philosophic ideas in the text. The research method is based on juxtaposing a
social-semiotic interpretation and a literary commentary. Firstly, the article applies the
Hallidayan model of the dimensions of discourse – field, tenor and mode – to an excerpt
from Yeats’s poetic drama, as the context of situation. Secondly, the article identifies
specific Indian philosophic concepts in the text and establishes how they influence the
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structure of dramatic verse and the characterization of protagonists. The discussion reveals
the extent of complementarity and tension between the two approaches and how they
change the reading of the text when open to disparate disciplinary perspectives. Final
results signify the potential and applicability of the analytical categories to research across
diverse discourses.
Keywords: discourse analysis; sociolinguistics; Indian philosophy; W.B. Yeats; literary
critique; systemic functional linguistics; The herne’s egg; poetic drama; metafunctions;
contextual dimensions of language

Introduction
Selecting a surreal, satirical Irish play for an ambitious exercise in discourse analysis may seem
to be something of a wayward impulse. Nevertheless, The herne’s egg, a controversial and
complex verse drama first published in 1938,1 which W.B. Yeats (1865– 1939) wrote at the
end of his prolific life, is a fertile ground for such a linguistic exercise. Being the first of his extra-
ordinary last three plays (the other two being Purgatory and The death of Cuchulain, 1939), it
heralded an experimental dramatic style, a comic and profane expression, a mature poet’s per-
sonal belief system and, unarguably, the most obscure and mysterious mix of philosophic ideas
and symbology. Part of this strange mélange had its origin in his lifelong interest, initially a
youthful enchantment and later a profound grasp of particular key tenets of Indian philosophy.
A close analysis and an intertextual reading of the play have called for an investigation with a
specific focus: to identify Indian philosophic concepts, as elements of Yeats’s expression, and
establish their influence on the structure of dramatic dialogue and the casting of its characters.
However, to challenge this literary philosophic approach, discourse analysis, focusing on
M.A.C. Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (SFL), appeared to be a valuable interpretative
technique for a poetic narrative.
As a major social linguistic theory, SFL can be applied to diverse socio-cultural contexts
where language as text is the key focus and as such, a construct with a social purpose. Interde-
pendence of text and context is crucial for meaning making and determined by expressive
analytical categories of field, tenor and mode. They have a descriptive role and also allow

∗
Email: snedabic@yahoo.com.au

ISSN 1740-5904 print/ISSN 1740-5912 online

# 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17405901003675414
http://www.informaworld.com
 114 S. Dabić

their users to make predictions by understanding register as a distinctive linguistic variable,

which in turn facilitates participant interaction.
Thus, the main purpose of this article is to explore Yeats’s text within the framework of the
dimensions of discourse, occurring in the environment of meaning exchange, namely, field,
tenor and mode, as interacting aspects of context, more precisely ‘the context of situation’.2
Next, by correlating the above conceptual framework with metafunctions of language (idea-
tional, interpersonal, textual) in the analysis,3 I intend to discover what indications of contexts
the text carries, and what are immanent power relations within the context of the play and
Yeats’s life. In the process, the interpretative strategies will include the analytical tools of
theme and rheme, lexical cohesion, transitivity, connective strategies, repetition and modality
as linguistic features and properties of texture.
The article further aims at shedding more light on specific Indian concepts and ideas
employed by Yeats as either his guiding principles or structural building blocks for his narrative.
The data from this investigation will point to the suitability and value of applying the two
approaches (discourse analysis and literary philosophic one) and, subsequently, elucidate how
arriving at new ideas and viewing perspectives spring from the analyses that allow for the
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multiplicity of readings. In addition, there is an expectation to reveal ideological underpinnings

of the drama, possibly hidden within the strata of a given context whose semiotic properties need
to be understood in order to make specific meaning predictions.
Finally, the article attempts to demonstrate the applicability of SFL analysis and its theoreti-
cal categories as key critical tools, capable of unveiling most cryptic messages and connotations,
to discourse studies across diverse disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.

Analytical values of the three contextual variables

Field of discourse
The first feature of the context, the field of discourse, determines its relationship to the text.
It points to the content, as an idea or activity correlated with the language used. As a contextual
variable it refers to themes/topics and actions in The herne’s egg and is concerned with a public
text, an extract (the very end) from the play, originally intended to be read or performed, referred
to as the literary genre of drama, a shifting, dynamic category, nestled within the framework of a
wider literary discourse. This type of text Coulthard calls ‘scripts for the performing of pseudo-
conversations’ (Coulthard, 1996, p. 182) to which he applies conversational analysis techniques.
He points out that in such texts Grice’s quantity maxim, ‘make your contribution as informative
but not more informative than is required’ (ibid.), is often violated – characters are frequently
given lines to inform the audience rather than each other. We shall see that the opposite is true in
our chosen excerpt from The herne’s egg (see the Appendix).
Participants in the play are engaged in a conversation about two characters who are not
present, Great Herne and King Congal, more specifically, the nature of the Herne which
seems to be both a spirit and a bird, and the fate of the king and his rebirth which have something
to do with the mating of donkeys. There is a mention of some work to be done for which ‘the
imperfection of a man is necessary’4 because a bird cannot perform such work. The dialogue
seems to make no sense without the context of the whole play. It also calls for the knowledge
of the world, and intertextual insight that draws on other texts, contexts and experiences of
readers to arrive at a clearer and possibly more specific interpretation. We are presented with
a social interaction between a priestess, Attracta, and her servant, Corney, discussing the
future of King Congal, who is to be reborn as a donkey because they were late in something
– that needs explanation.
 Critical Discourse Studies 115

In support of discussion, to develop an argument for deciphering intersecting meanings of

the text, at this point it would be helpful to give a summary of the plot as the context of the
play. Congal, the king of Connacht, and Aedh, the king of Tara, decide to celebrate a truce
after their fiftieth battle. For the banquet relish Congal chooses the sacred eggs of the Great
Herne that his soldiers steal from Attracta, the priestess and the guardian of the hernery,
despite her warning. The theft brings a curse upon the king, but he does not take it seriously
and further insults the god (Great Herne) by offering Attracta a cure for her madness –
sexual encounter with his seven men, which would free her, in his view, of her obsessive
delusion that she is betrothed to the bird-god. At the banquet the virgin Attracta substitutes
a hen’s egg for the herne’s egg. Congal accuses Aedh of the substitution and kills him.
On realizing the truth, he revenges himself by raping the priestess with his seven warriors.
This violation and the theft of eggs initiate a chain of punishments for Congal who has tres-
passed upon the exclusive right of the godhead. Attracta claims in a trance that she has lain with
her husband, the Great Herne, denying the rape, and to prove it calls up a thunder as a manifes-
tation of the deity’s power. Finally, persuaded of the herne’s divine existence, Congal submits
and accepts his fate, foretold in the curse, to die as a fool at a fool’s hand and be reborn at a lower
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level in evolution. With his last breath he still defiantly challenges the god, appealing to Attracta
to save his soul. She decides to help him by having carnal intercourse (with her servant Corney)
in order to conceive a child into whom Congal would reincarnate, but they are too late in the act
of procreation, so the king is to be born as a beast.
The context of the plot clarifies the key points: why Attracta lay with the Great Herne (or
believed she had done so), what work needs to be done, what she and Corney were late with
and why King Congal must be born a donkey. The extract that we focus on in this study begins
to make sense. Clearly, the field of discourse is reflected in the main vocabulary of the semantic
domain: ‘Great Herne’, ‘spirit’, ‘donkey’, ‘King Congal’, and in transitivity structures in the
grammar: ‘lay’, ‘begot’, ‘braying’, ‘couples’, ‘born’, etc. The field is about the social interaction
amongst all the characters, carrying different ideological connotations. Broadly, the field of dis-
course within the play also deals with intercourse on three planes: woman – bird, woman – man,
donkey– donkey and the results of their actions. Yet, at the writer’s level, the field points to
Yeats’s relationship with the members of his community of discourse in a symbolic and allegorical
way, reflecting his experiential meaning as transposed through the process of imaginative writing.

Tenor of discourse
The second feature of context, the tenor of discourse, further determines the interaction between
text and context. It focuses on the function and purposes of participants in communication
exchange, including the audience. As a register variable, it refers to language users, their
social positions and roles (Halliday & Hasan, 1993, pp. 12– 14, 26 –31), indicating the relation-
ships amongst the protagonists of the play: Attracta and the Great Herne (priestess – god,
woman– bird), Attracta and Congal (priestess– king, woman – man) and Attracta and Corney
(priestess –servant, woman – man). The duality of their roles is revealed in the dialogue. The
hierarchical relationship between the members of the community changes and authority shifts
in the course of their interaction.
The primary tenor is explicit – Attracta and Corney are talking to each other and to us (the
audience) about a spiritual leader and a worldly leader. It is interesting to note the use of personal
pronouns: ‘he’ is initially used for the bird-god, then for a donkey, for the king and also for
Corney; ‘we’ refers to the interlocutors; ‘I’ to the priestess and ‘it’ to the donkey. The characters
engaged in the dialogue both have equal numbers of turns, but Attracta’s are longer, which puts
emphasis on the hierarchy, the importance of her rank and role and the essence of her talk.
 116 S. Dabić

The secondary tenor is more implicit, it deals with producer – recipient relationship where the
producer is Yeats and the recipients are his audience, contemporary and future: readers (critics,
writers, friends, poetry lovers, theatre goers), all the people involved in the production of the
book and the performance of the play, and others. The playwright is communicating his
message to all, but an in-depth analysis is needed for its decoding. His immediate role is to
tell a tale, entertain, puzzle, intrigue and shock. His socially significant role, known only
from his social and cultural (and for us historical as well) context, is one of high status within
his field: he is a world-famous poet, a writer, a statesman and a Nobel laureate.
The tenor reveals a cluster of changing relationships whose roles are both temporary and per-
manent and represent a fluid process rather than a fixed feature of the context of situation. The
players engage in this process to co-create the text of the literary narrative for an audience that
construes meaning/s from both text and contexts.

Mode of discourse
The third feature of context, the mode of discourse, further clarifies and determines the relation-
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ship between the text and its context. Its focus is text or situation organizing, regardless of how
complex or symbolic they may be. Here it denotes the communication channel and the role of
language, pointing to a published text (initially handwritten), a play, a combination of mono-
logue5 and dialogue meant to be performed in theatre, acted out for broadcasting, written
about and discussed in literary salons and other circles. It is composed for acting, but can be
read as a book. Such a form allows for storage in space and over time, which J. Goody sees
as the first function of language, allowing for future highly technologized media productions,
but his second function that ‘shifts language from oral to the visual domain’ (Goody in
Brown & Yule, 1991, p. 13) is equally applicable to the text, permitting its transfer and appear-
ance outside original context. A change of mode and decontextualization lead to a higher level of
abstractness. As a written text, the play maintains its transactional function by sending the
author’s message to his readers. In doing so, it expresses social relations and individual attitudes,
which mark its interactional function (ibid., pp. 1 – 3).
Yeats had been writing the play from 1935 to 1938 when it was first published. The book is
easily accessible; it can be borrowed from a library or bought, even today. The fact that the
drama was performed by Lord Longford’s Company in 19396 and turned down by the Abbey
Theatre as ‘too ribald to be produced’ (Hone, 1971, p. 466) speaks of its poor reception by
the author’s contemporary audience due to objectionable language use; for instance, ‘he
couples’, ‘donkey has conceived’ to ‘give a human form’ to King Congal, to name a few frag-
ments from the last 23 lines alone. It clearly did not incite a sympathetic reading; instead, the role
of his language seems to have been creating grotesque characters, irreverent themes, sexual
metaphors, farcical atmosphere and absurdity, as if to repulse and shock rather than attract
the audience.
However, the play was finally staged by the Abbey Theatre in 1950 and we can assume that a
new audience (or Abbey Board members) was more open-minded and less moralizing. Yeats did
not live to see it. Yet, his comments about the play state that it was a ‘very Rabelaisian [sic] play’
and ‘the strangest wildest thing I have ever written’ (Yeats, 1954, pp. 904 and 845). This partly
explains a tacitly unfavourable attitude of some of his contemporaries who were not prepared for
such a trying experience. They did not expect a language that shocks, or Yeats, a highly
respected elderly gentleman at the time and a distinguished poet, to mock their views and
values, conservative or not, by presenting a travesty. Also, the political context of the pre-World
War II atmosphere was neither agreeable nor well inclined to a satirical allegory that allowed for
a diversity of interpretations. His contemporary critics labelled the play as ‘extravagant fancies’
 Critical Discourse Studies 117

with ‘irreverent appeal’, ‘strange and perverse symbolism’ and ‘anaemic’ mythology (Parkin,
1991, pp. 26– 27), etc.
By correlating the context of Yeats’s life, social environment and the historical period with
the features of the text, it appears that ambivalence reigns, but certain meanings emerge as well
as multiple predictions of meaning.

Literary text, context, functions and cohesion

Having identified field, tenor and mode of the text, which point to the context of situation – the
mysterious play and Yeats’s era – it is productive to look at the semantic system and the three
language metafunctions constructed by the grammar. They are expressed in terms of ideational
(experiential and logical), interpersonal and textual meanings (Halliday & Hasan, 1993, pp. 18–
28), which feature in the above dimensions of the discourse and carry diverse potentials of
meaning. More specifically, the field is realized through experiential function, the tenor
through interpersonal and the mode through the textual function in the semantics. Metafunctions
are applied as explorative principles, construing and enabling meaning through speaker inter-
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action, ordering of reasoning and experience, and textual communication.

The extract from the play is a representation of Yeats’s reality and certain recognizable
phenomena within the play, for example, spiritual being, animal mating, human – animal
relationship, transmigration of soul and so on, but it does not entirely display an experiential
meaning. This is not how we usually experience the real, physical world around us. Therefore,
that meaning has to be endowed with an imaginative representation of experience to allow for an
interpretation that is metaphoric and symbolic. We, the audience, are reflecting with the prota-
gonists. They interact and reflect on the other two heroes (Congal and Great Herne) in the play,
revealing their personal links. The thematic structure seems to be incongruent with mood and the
organization of logical relations does not lend itself easily to an interpretation without further
comprehensive analysis.

Theme and rheme

More is revealed by examining the patterns of theme as ‘the first clause-level constituent at the
beginning of the clause’ (Fries, 1994, p. 234) (or Hallidayan starting point) also understood as
topic, and rheme as the content or comment that follows theme, or the newsworthy part of the
clause. Within this framework we may discern or create a reading position that seemingly carries
no values, which would conflict with those embedded in Yeats’s text. All the key participants are
foregrounded (including some of their states and acts): ‘I’ (Attracta), ‘he’ (herne), ‘spirit’
(herne), ‘donkey’ (the parent of Congal’s next rebirth), ‘Congal’ (the king), ‘he’ (Corney), ‘thir-
teen months’ (donkey’s pregnancy), ‘trouble’ (intercourse). These are some of the topical
themes that create a frame for the action of the main players by organizing the message.
Their theme position here highlights the characters’ significance and the order of hierarchy.
By textual thematizing, such as ‘but there’, ‘that’, ‘because’, ‘too late’, a certain dynamism is
established and the audience is given an orientation. Repetition of themes, ‘being all . . . being
all’, ‘too late, too late’, ‘there, down there’ creates a rhythm, as used in ballads and poems,
with an almost mantric or chorus-like quality, which puts weight on the meaning of discourse
markers. The same effect is created by echoing: ‘begot . . . begot’, ‘must be born . . . must be
born’, sounding like the beat of some ancient tribal drums or the prophecies of the Delphic
oracles. It evokes primordial times and establishes temporal continuity. Thus a mood of
mystery and certain (reader) curiousness are instantly induced.
 118 S. Dabić

Patterns emerging from the positioning and connectedness of the theme and rheme, merely
understood as the topic and its comment, often point to the repetition of the theme or show how
the rheme becomes the theme of the next clause, e.g. ‘the Great Herne’ becomes ‘being all a
spirit’. These categories carry lexical value. Such combinations reflect a poetic and dramatic
style of the literary genre and help the audience establish another perspective.

Lexical strings
Analysis of lexical strings adds to what is achieved with thematization by concentrating on the
protagonists of the play. One string follows the Great Herne about which we learn that it is male,
a spirit, self-sufficient and a bird (‘he’, ‘his image’, ‘spirit’, ‘all sufficient to himself’, ‘beak nor
claw’). The other string focuses on donkeys (‘donkey’, ‘he’, ‘his mind’, ‘another donkey’, ‘that
donkey’, ‘a donkey’, ‘King Congal’, ‘its young’, ‘other beast’, ‘it’) and the result of their coup-
ling, which is the ignoble rebirth of King Congal. The main characteristics of the rivals are given
through lexical strings: we find out about the bird-god that seems to be perfect and thus above the
heroic fall of the king, who is to be carried in a beast for 13 months.
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The main topics unfold interactively as a joint activity between Attracta and Corney. There is
a fine example of relexicalization (McCarthy, 1991) when the protagonists take and build on one
another’s vocabulary to expand communication, as in the repetitive use of ‘donkey’. Yeats
employs lexical relations to emphasize difference in meaning and devices of evaluation. For
example, first we find out that the Great Herne is a spirit, only to realize that it is flawed by
having a beak and claws and by being unable to reproduce; as for Congal, first we hear that
he is a king and then that he is to become a beast. So both heroes are ironically degraded and
made powerless – they are no longer (or not at all) human but animal-like.
The same inference, with a slight difference in the nuance of the meaning, can be drawn from
the analysis of substitution and repetition of pronouns, namely the use of ‘he’ for the herne, the
king and the donkey. However, the herne remains a ‘he’, but Congal becomes an ‘it’, and that ‘it’
also applies to ‘trouble’ and to ‘beast’. Here lexical relations progressively build towards evalu-
ation, irony being the most prominent tool. Thus, the king’s fall is deeper and more shameful
whereas the bird-god still retains a certain high status – even if imperfect, it is still divine.
Nevertheless, the disgrace of the fall is lessened by the fact that donkey echoes Christ’s
journey to Jerusalem on the same animal. Also, a life-size toy donkey is used as a stage
effect earlier in the play. Continuing with this intertextual line of reading, for the contemporary
audience in particular, a widely acclaimed animation Shrek7 that boasts a hilariously witty char-
acter, Donkey, helps the audience accept the absurd of The herne’s egg with a smile.

Transitivity
It seems productive to connect the lexical string analysis with the complex matrix of transitivity
processes, which describe the participants’ experience as an active process, through their deeds.
Most of them are material, pointing to a narrative and the building of action, mainly presented by
words that express the acts of copulation between the characters: ‘lay’, ‘begot’, ‘couples’, ‘has
conceived’, ‘must be born’, ‘carries’. Thus we are confronted with the creation and recreation of
lives. Still, the register, aptly defined, for our purpose here, as ‘the linguistic consequence of
interacting aspects of context’ (Chapelle, 1998, p. 2), namely field, tenor and mode and their
configurations (Halliday & Hasan, 1993, pp. 38– 43), pertains more to animal than human inter-
actions. It seems that the people are not portrayed in a very positive light, and the power relations
are favouring the non-human agent. Yet, Yeats, the lover of life, may be playing a mischievous
joke on his unsuspecting audience.
 Critical Discourse Studies 119

Relational transitivity processes indicate the state of mind and feelings of the principals, for
example, they speak of necessity (‘needs’), intention (‘has’), relationship (‘were not’) and
emotion (‘laughs’), connecting the donkey with the interlocutors. It is interesting to note a
verbal transitivity process in ‘is braying’, where a non-human agent communicates a message
to the speakers and wider, a message that has a quality of an ominous annunciation. The juxta-
position of transitivity processes, closely associated with the protagonists of the play, indicates
an other-worldly atmosphere, removed from the tangible, manifest reality, where reincarnation
is a fact and an unquestioned belief, but irony and cynicism have their place (Corney ‘laughs’),
all of which evince Yeats’s writing position and help further distinguish the genre as literary
narrative.

Modality
Closely linked with the transitivity network, in this case, is modality, concerned with the attitude
of the two speakers. In the text there are examples of both epistemic and root modality,8 more
precisely, modal verbs and lexis carrying information and meanings expressed by the characters.
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Attracta speaks of work that ‘should’ and ‘needs’ to be done and that she ‘thought’ she ‘could’
help him, yet Congal ‘must’ be born as a donkey which ‘carries’ its offspring, and so on. Her
obligation does not seem to be high, her volition is higher and commitment genuine (she
engaged in intercourse with her servant), but the degree of certainty regarding the king’s fate
indicates high polarity. The priestess demonstrates assertiveness and Corney detachment
(‘have heard’; his laughter). Modality manifestly deals with the stance of the principals, reveal-
ing their interpersonal meanings as part of the tenor of discourse.

Cohesion
If we look for more patterned recurrences that create cohesion as a relational, lexical resource,
referencing may offer some clues about the text. Anaphoric references9 (pointing back in the text
to avoid repetition) again suggest looking at the main characters, including pronouns and
articles, and form a line of meaning similar to a lexical string. There is a noteworthy example
of the use of a ‘retrospective label’10 as an aspect of anaphoric lexical cohesion: ‘All that
(trouble and nothing to show for it)’ (line 182), which points to the interpretation of the preced-
ing dialogue between Attracta and Corney about Congal’s dishonourable fate and provides the
key frame of reference for the reading of the text. Exophoric references (external to the text),
mainly expressed by definite articles and demonstrative pronouns, call on immediate context
or one assumed by Yeats to have been shared with his readers.
Other knowledge and experience, indeed, are required to make sense of the text. For
example, ‘the’ (Great Herne) indicates a previously established status of the bird, but ‘the’
(mirror of my spirit) poses a question about which mirror and how can a spirit have a
mirror?! ‘The’ (imperfection) indicates human ability to reproduce and its non-divine nature,
thus pointing to a paradox: how can it be imperfect if it possesses an ability that the godhead
lacks, and how can the godhead be perfect if unable to procreate? The problem posed is universal
and present in many religio-philosophic systems, which discuss the omnipotence of god/gods. In
this case, however, the answer cannot be construed satisfactorily, for there seems to be no
reasonable or adequate explanation in the text, nor could I find an acceptable one outside it,
but the key to this enigma may possibly lie in Yeats’s own philosophical and poetic
phantasmagoria.
Another cohesive category, conjunction, contributes to the elucidation of the text by giving
new signals of how it should or may be read to make sense. All the conjunctives are single
 120 S. Dabić

words; most of them are contrastive (‘but’) with slightly differing meanings (only, except, yet).
The effect of the first additive conjunction ‘and’, for instance, is to put the readers in the frame of
mind which takes for granted that the Herne is a spirit. That instantly constructs a different
reality and causes a shift of perspective in the reader’s mind. ‘Because’, as a consequential con-
junction, is anaphoric for it points to the act of copulation that took place previously. The last
‘but’ in the text indicates a no-choice position. All the above cohesive elements create specific
texture and stylistic relationships within the chosen extract of the play.

Multifaceted perspectives of textual and non-textual contexts

Critical discourse analysis reading has arisen from multiple contextual perspectives, both
internal and external to the drama. A densely interwoven fabric of meanings is pulled apart to
show the many functions of each fragment or line of the poetic text. On the other hand, literary
philosophic study of the play has resulted in findings that both differ from and hold the above
approach to the text in a way that can best be illustrated by a series of concentric circles.
Each segment is overlapping with the next, starting with the centre that ripples outwards, that
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is, from the text towards diverse contexts, illuminating embedded meanings. At the points of
their intersection, linguistic and literary analyses are integrated and complement each other,
but create tension when moving apart. Nonetheless, outer circles present wider and possibly
in-exhaustive contexts for this and any future readings of the poet’s dramatic verse.
While engaged in determining which Indian philosophic concepts figure in the play and
examining their origin and impact on the dramatic structure and the main characters, I have
established that certain discourse markers point to a number of various discourses running
through the text. They are namely the discourses of philosophy (Indian: Vedas, Bhagavad-
Gita, Upanishads; and the poet’s own: A vision); theosophy (Madame Blavatsky’s The secret
doctrine); religion (pagan and Christian); reincarnation (transmigration of soul, rebirth –
Celtic, Indian, Greek, Nietzschean); poetry (Elliott’s Waste land, Yeats’s Leda and the swan,
Tagore’s The king of the dark chamber, Sir Samuel Ferguson’s Congal); allegory, farce;
Greek and Roman mythology and literature (Ovid’s Metamorphosis; Apuleius’ The golden
ass); copious Irish history and folklore, Celtic legends (the principals’ names: Congal, Aedh,
Attracta; for example, ‘herne’ is archaic for ‘heron’, etc.); Japanese Noh drama; Arcadia; burl-
esque; royalty; Swedenborg’s and Boehme’s mystical writing, and others.11 It is essential to look
at a broader context of some of these issues in order to create a (currently) final, even if not
necessarily an ‘ideal’ reading position for we cannot say with certainty how Yeats wanted his
audience to view the drama.
The historic period in which Yeats wrote the play and his personal circumstances mark
several essential events in the author’s life. As he confesses, the drama was written ‘in the
happier moments of a long illness that had so separated me from life that I felt irresponsible’
(Yeats, 1965/1966, p. 1311); he also admits that the plot echoes Ferguson’s ‘Congal’ from
1872. In 1934 Yeats had undergone the Steinach operation, notable for rejuvenation (Ellman,
1973, p. 280); in 1937 the second edition of his philosophic work, A vision,12 was published;
in 1938 The herne’s egg appeared in press and World War II was a looming danger. It
seemed as if the play had cast a shadow on the world; a malignant universe was about to be born.

Indian philosophic ideas as guiding principles

During the last few years of his life Yeats was also engaged in writing his ‘Indian essays’13 and
in the collaborative translation of the Upanishads and Patanjali’s Aphorisms of yoga with his
friend, an Indian monk, Shri Purohit Swami. He comments in his letters that the play is
 Critical Discourse Studies 121

Swami’s ‘philosophy in a fable, or mine confirmed by him’ (Yeats, 1954, p. 844). Yeats was well
acquainted with some of the key concepts and ideas of Indian philosophy from his readings and
personal contacts with the founder of theosophy, Madame Blavatsky and a Bengali Brahmin,
Mohini Chatterji, at different stages of his life. He was also profoundly moved by devotional
poetry of the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore (later a Nobel Prize laureate), whom he pro-
moted in Europe by helping him publish Gitanjali (Song offerings).14 Yeats contributed an Intro-
duction full of admiration for the lyrics of the Bengali poet.
This kind of intertextual approach has led me to an interpretation of the central symbols of
Yeats’s play (‘spirit’, ‘Great Herne’), from an Indian philosophic perspective. In the Upanishads
the Supreme Self is called ‘the Self, Hamsa, the solitary Bird’ (Swami & Yeats, 1971, p. 149).
The herne resembles hamsa (the swan), both white and migratory birds, embodying purity and
symbolizing the unity of god and man, more specifically, the individual with the universal spirit
(Tyberg, 1970, p. 99). That union of the personal self or spirit with the impersonal one leads to
immortality. ‘He who has found Spirit, is Spirit’, says Mundaka Upanishad (Swami & Yeats,
1971, p. 56).
Attracta’s rigid dance-like movements and her strange actions point to samadhi as the
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highest state of meditative absorption of which Yeats wrote in his Indian essays, calling it
‘the state of dreamless sleep’.15 Self-knowledge and awareness mark the spiritual state of desire-
less samadhi. In her rigid state of self-poise, Attracta pronounces her divine connection in a
rhythmic speech, expressing divine will. Thus the use of symbology shapes the structure of
the poetic narrative as well as the key protagonist’s acts and her human-divine (id)entity.
Attracta’s devotional monologue recalls Bhakti tradition, according to which an individual
seeks salvation through surrender to a personal god, in her case, the Great Herne. In Bhakti doc-
trine any of the great gods from the Indian philosophic tradition, for example, Shiva, Vishnu or
their manifestations, depending on a devotee’s choice, can serve this purpose. A mystical ideal,
bhaktih, pertains to sublime feelings of almost erotic religiosity (Veljačić, 1978, pp. 312 – 313,
355), an unconditional love of god. Such is Attracta’s blind surrender to her bird-god.
Congal’s rebirth, as punishment for his transgression, points to the concept of reincarnation
and his new shape is the result of the karmic law of causality (Bachchan, 1974, pp. 185– 203).
The law applies to all embodied beings, measuring their deeds in degrees of ethical and unethical
conduct. Only right action brings the karmic flow to an end in both Buddhist and Hindu thought.
In Yeats’s terms, the final release happens in the thirteenth cycle (from A vision, the poet’s phi-
losophical system) or a divine sphere, which echoes Corney’s ‘thirteen months’. In A vision
Yeasts says: ‘The Thirteenth Cone or cycle which is in every man and called by every man
his freedom’ (Yeats, 1937/1979, p. 302), the ultimate release. In Indian philosophy this
notion of freedom corresponds to the concept of moksha or liberation, attained by removing
ignorance and through the direct realization of the true self or ‘the disappearance of a false
outlook’ (Radhakrishan, 1958, p. 637). Moksha ruptures the cycle of rebirth. As it comes at
the breaking point – of intersecting two dimensions of being – it is inevitably a fateful
moment that endows the donkey with a spiritual aspect. But no less bizarre for it. Further, the
bird suggests eggs and the egg symbolism recalls the cosmic egg of the Vedas,16 the egg
of Brahma from which the universe has sprung. Thus, the sanctity of eggs must be preserved.
A new era of the human universe commences with the bird-god and man-donkey at its fore.

Integrating perspectives
The herne’s egg is equally unique and repetitive. It calls on a diversity of texts and contexts. It
does not seem to fit into the literary practices of Yeats’s time, judging by its unsympathetic
reception and other available literature. Therefore, we cannot claim that he benefited from
 122 S. Dabić

telling his story in this manner. The play constructed reality in a rather strange but symbolic way,
an unlikely and absurd blend of solemn atmosphere and farcical humour. The pattern of his
choices seems to be unusual, so the simple lexical meaning of the text is insufficient, incongru-
ous and confusing.
We can almost say with certainty that in his later years Yeats did not care much for main-
taining a sound relationship with his social group. The fact that the Abbey Theatre did not
perform the play until 1950 suggests that the author himself was left somewhat powerless.
The play did not contribute to his symbolic capital at the time. However, his victory might
have been of another kind, he had the satisfaction, at the end of his rich and fulfilling life, of
being able to write a text that defied criticism and mocked the virtues and values of his contem-
poraries. He could afford to be ignored, laughed at or even have a brief flirtation with fascist
ideas, as reflected in the poet’s association with Irish Blueshirts (North, 1991, pp. 40 and 61;
Stanfield, 1988, p. 61).
In The herne’s egg Yeats has painted a vision of human history which ‘led to the ultimate
breakdown of the heroic age’ (Guha, 1968, p. 133) and with it the disappearance of old
values and grand narratives. Congal being the last exponent of those values, what Hillman
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would call ‘personified archetypes as Gods’ (Hillman, 1975, p. 35), Attracta (resembling
Maud Gonne, Yeats’s unfulfilled love), the female principle and the Great Herne, the herald
of the new era and World War II. By juxtaposing such extraordinary characters, unlikely hero
archetypes, Yeats seems to have wedded his Irish nationalism with his poetic individualism;
the natural with the supernatural, the sacred with the worldly – his lifelong field of interest,
indicating that ultimately they are one.

Conclusions
Without the knowledge of the presented contexts, both textual and non-textual, of Yeats’s era
(social, cultural, historic), it would be impossible to create an Indian reading position given
here. The analysis and interpretation indicate a previously established reading perspective and
a dense aesthetic experience as well as a relation with the particular discourse community. Yet,
this stance has undergone a slight paradigm shift with discourse analysis approach to the text.
Such an analysis offers analytical devices and means that can bring out even more general as
well as specific clues simultaneously, broadening the meaning potential of the dramatic text.
Clearly, the above enquiry is framed by the reader’s sensibilities while interacting with the
text. Nonetheless, the given contexts – textual and larger, as presented – are equally illuminat-
ing and constraining the reading position by the very nature of the presentation that carries with
it already embedded views and values and a construction of reality/ies. Thus the meaning that
has been realized is contingent on the reader’s structuring, choices and acquisition of discourse
in the process of deciphering language codes and mechanisms, on one hand, and by pursuing
symbolic and metaphorical analogues in esoteric and Indian philosophic traditions, on the
other. The intersection of these discourses yields up both ironic and paradoxical readings of
all the aspects of the wholeness of the literary structure. Furthermore, the chosen extract reflects
these ideas, including elusive ideological views of the protagonists and their creator.
It seems fitting to close by pointing out that the discourse analysis approach to Yeats’s poetic
drama suggests the significance of examining multiple contexts simultaneously, which exude
certain finer strata of meanings as a result of their dynamic relationship that in turn contributes
to the literary critique of the play, and the Indian philosophic reading of it. All the properties of
the analysed text, as fragments of a unique masterpiece, create a thematic structure and rhythm
and an unexpected semantic and grammatical balance. They enhance our understanding of the
genre of literary discourse (verse drama in particular) and further push its boundaries.
 Critical Discourse Studies 123

The herne’s egg may not be the representation of our shared reality nor can we say what the
authorial intent embodied in it was, or how communicable it has been over the last half a century,
but, we can say with certainty that discourse analysis adds a missing dimension to existing
meaning/s, and its intertextual references do not exhaust all of its possibilities and connotations.
At the same time, Indian concepts give the play subtle philosophic depth and transcultural
perspective. This is Yeats’s answer to his society, his view of the world and a prophetic
voice, possibly a mystifying and grotesque answer, but nevertheless provocative and humorous,
which gives his poetic power and ideological position a peculiar slant of multimeaningfulness.
The article has revealed how specific application of critical discourse analysis aids interpret-
ation of an ambivalent, dynamic discourse, situated at the interface of literary and philosophic
studies. Consequently, the discussion points to the capability of such an analysis of the text, and
its argument as presented here, to flexibly replicate itself across interdisciplinary discourses,
from applied linguistics and pedagogy, across media communication, politics and anthropology
to the web studies and beyond.

Notes on contributor
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Snežana Dabić is a member of the Faculty of Further Education of NMIT in Melbourne, Australia. She has
studied, taught or worked in Yugoslavia, Australia, China and the USA, including Semester at Sea – a scho-
larly voyage around the world. She has taught English, literature and communication. Her research and
writing focus on discourse analysis, multiliteracy pedagogy, identity creation and literary study.

Notes
1. First published by Macmillan in London in 1938. Jeffares and Knowland (1975), pp. 265 and 268.
2. The term originally coined by B. Malinowski was further expanded and transformed into a generally
more applicable concept by J.R. Firth and D. Hymes. Halliday and Hasan (1993), pp. 6–9.
3. Ibid., pp. 44– 45; Halliday (1994), pp. 136– 140.
4. Yeats (1965/1966), Variorum edition, 1040 (line 167). All the citations from The herne’s egg come
from The variorum edition of the plays of W.B. Yeats. From this point forward full line citations
from the play are indicated in the text by a line number and single words or phrases are only put in
quotation marks. See the Appendix.
5. See lines 160–167 in the Appendix.
6. Jeffares (1991) states in the ‘Notes’ to Selected plays that the play was performed for the very first time
by Lord Longford’s Company in 1939 and that it finally appeared at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin as
late as 1950 (p. 254). Parkin (1991), though, claims that the play was first staged by Austin Clarke’s
Lyric Theatre Company at the Abbey Theatre in 1950 (p. 25).
7. Shrek is an Academy Award winning animated feature film directed by Andrew Adamson.
8. Epistemic modality is ‘concerned with degrees of certainty and possibility’ and root modality with
‘volition, permission, obligation’ (McCarthy, 1991, p. 85).
9. Ibid., pp. 35– 36.
10. Francis indicates that ‘a retrospective label serves to encapsulate or package a stretch of discourse’,
but is not merely a repetition of what precedes it, rather ‘it is presented as equivalent to the clause’
or segments it replaces (Francis, 1994, pp. 83 and 88).
11. The use of Indian philosophic concepts in The herne’s egg is briefly dealt with in the Introduction and
discussed at length in Chapter 3 (‘Indian Philosophic Concepts in The Herne’s Egg’) of the doctoral
thesis (Dabić, 1995, pp. 1–14 and 93–138).
12. Yeats’s complex philosophic system based on the ‘automatic writing’ of his wife was first published in
1925.
13. They include Introductions to: Tagore’s Gitanjali (1913/1986); Swami’s autobiography, An Indian
monk (1932); The Holy Mountain (1934); The Mandukya Upanishad (1935); Patanjali’s Aphorisms
of yoga (1938); and a ‘Preface’ to The ten principal Upanishads (Swami & Yeats, 1971).
14. See Tagore, Gitanjali (1913/1986); see also Singh (1976), pp. 41–46.
15. Yeats (1937), p. 99. Also, Rajan takes samadhi to stand for a state of shapeless Being (Rajan, 1965),
p. 163.
 124 S. Dabić

16. On the Indian philosophy of the Vedas and the Upanishads see Müller (1899/1994), Radhakrishnan
(1958) and Veljačić (1978).

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Appendix: Excerpt from The herne’s egg, W.B. Yeats

160. Attracta. I lay with the Great Herne, and he,
161. Being all a spirit, but begot
162. His image in the mirror of my spirit,
163. Being all sufficient to himself
 Critical Discourse Studies 125

164. Begot himself; but there’s a work

165. That should be done, and that work needs
166. No bird’s beak nor claw, but a man,
167. The imperfection of a man.
[The sound of donkey braying.

168. Corney. The donkey is braying.

169. He has some wickedness in his mind.
170. Attracta. Too late, too late, he broke that knot,
171. And there, down there among the rocks
172. He couples with another donkey.
173. That donkey has conceived. I thought that I
174. Could give a human form to Congal,
175. But now he must be born a donkey.
176. Corney. King Congal must be born a donkey!
182. Attracta. Because we were not quick enough.
182. Corney. I have heard that a donkey carries its young
182. Longer that any other beast,
182. Thirteen months it must carry it.
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[He laughs.

182. All that trouble and nothing to show for it,

182. Nothing but just another donkey.
THE END (Yeats, 1965/1966, pp. 1039– 1040)

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