The article discusses the morality of W. B. Yeats’ sonnet Leda and the Swan in the context of a widening gap between the sexual mores of earlier times and our own, and whether the poem remains a suitable choice for the teaching of stylistics. I begin by examining stylistics treatments of the poem, and its political, social and artistic context, then move on to consider charges of misogyny against the poem for eroticising and failing to condemn the rape it depicts. To assess these charges I examine other literary uses of the Leda myth both before and after Yeats, including earlier poems which romanticise the rape, and later ones which vilify it. I also consider the implications of my discussion for the teaching of other canonical poems on similar themes. The last part of the paper discusses more generally the place of morality in literature and literature teaching, including stylistics: whether teachers and analysts should promote a moral world view and moral behaviour through their choice of texts and comments on them, or whether there are other valid criteria for selecting and describing a text such as Leda and the Swan. To elucidate current views, I draw parallels with the moral didacticism of the highly influential literary critic F. R. Leavis in the mid twentieth century, and ask whether aspects of his patrician view have undergone a surreptitious revival in some contemporary pedagogy and criticism at the beginning of the twenty first.

本文讨论了叶芝（WB Yeats）十四行诗莱达（Leda）和天鹅（Swan）的道德在较早的性爱与我们之间的差距越来越大的背景下，以及这首诗是否仍然是文体学教学的合适选择。首先，我将研究这首诗的文体学处理方法，其政治，社会和艺术背景，然后继续考虑对这首诗的厌女症指控，以使其色情化并未能谴责其所描绘的强奸行为。为了评估这些指控，我考察了叶芝之前和之后莱达神话的其他文学用途，包括使强奸浪漫化的早期诗歌，以及使强奸成为浪漫的后来的诗歌。我还考虑了我的讨论对于其他类似主题的经典诗歌教学的意义。本文的最后一部分更广泛地讨论了道德在文学和文学教学中的位置，包括文体学：莱达和天鹅。为了阐明当前观点，我将其与二十世纪中叶极具影响力的文学评论家FR Leavis的道德教义主义相提并论，并询问他的贵族观点的某些方面是否在某些世纪初的当代教育学和批评中得到了暗中的复兴。二十一。