Book contents
- Seamus Heaney in Context
- Seamus Heaney in Context
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- I Mapping
- II Influences and Traditions
- III Poetics
- IV Publishing
- V Frameworks
- VI Critical Contexts
- Chapter 24 The Feminine
- Chapter 25 Heaney in Between
- Chapter 26 Critical Audiences
- Chapter 27 The Postcolonial
- Chapter 28 The Archipelago
- VII Legacy
- Index
Chapter 25 - Heaney in Between
from VI - Critical Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2021
- Seamus Heaney in Context
- Seamus Heaney in Context
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- I Mapping
- II Influences and Traditions
- III Poetics
- IV Publishing
- V Frameworks
- VI Critical Contexts
- Chapter 24 The Feminine
- Chapter 25 Heaney in Between
- Chapter 26 Critical Audiences
- Chapter 27 The Postcolonial
- Chapter 28 The Archipelago
- VII Legacy
- Index
Summary
A cliché of Heaney criticism is that his poetry can be divided into two phases: an earlier one of bog and body, a later one of air and spirit. It is less frequently observed that a third phase emerged in the late Heaney. His poems no longer treat body or spirit as a binary but explore the catalytic relationship between them, and the constant movement, between time and eternity, between the past and the present, between the represented and the representation, between history and memory, between filiation and affliliation. His poetry never erupted into a fulminating rage against the killings of the Troubles as an inevitable consequence of a rancid politics. A therapeutic function is fundamental to Heaney’s poetry. Violence enters his poetry as painful and wounding divisions, to which his poetry is applied as a healing ointment.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Seamus Heaney in Context , pp. 276 - 285Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021