Seamus Heaney’s Landscape Poetry: A Medium of Cultural and National Revival

Abstract

This paper investigates the close relationship between places, landscape, farming duties, and Irish national identity in Seamus Heaney’s poetry. Landscape is no more a reference to natural existence but it serves as a wider cultural image that is filled with memory and passion, and most importantly it refers to the emerging nation after suffering of English colonization. Ireland suffered centuries of oppression and the subsequent elimination of Irish language, history, culture, and national identity. What is unique about Heaney’s landscape poetry is that it is a literary medium of resisting English domination by deploying placenames that resist Anglicizing as placenames assert its peculiar Irishness. Similarly, landscape poetry serves as a tool of cultural healer to the poet and Irish people in general. In his early literary career, the poet shows an ambivalent attitude towards nature but towards the end of his literary writing, nature is symbol of beauty and turns into a political entity that celebrates the Irish national identity. Landscapes are fundamentally involved in the formations of the Irish national identity. The poet feels his obligation to follow the paths of his father and ancestors in reviving Irish traditions related to farming through landscape poetry rather than actual performance of farming activities.