The garden, the pasture and the bog: William Butler Yeats, John Hewitt and Seamus Heaney on colonialism and national identity.
Item
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Title
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The garden, the pasture and the bog: William Butler Yeats, John Hewitt and Seamus Heaney on colonialism and national identity.
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Identifier
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AAI9530908
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identifier
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9530908
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Creator
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O'Doherty, Fergal Columba.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Robert A. Day
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Date
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1995
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Modern | Literature, English | Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
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Abstract
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The dissertation provides a three part discussion on the ways in which modern Irish poetry reflects Ireland's colonial history and the resultant problems in forming a national identity. Chapter One discusses the historical and critical relations between the three main ethnic-religious communities in Ireland: the Anglo-Irish, of whom William Butler Yeats (1863-1939) is a centrally important member; John Hewitt (1907-1989), one of the few poets from the Ulster Protestant community; and Seamus Heaney (1939-), the primary poet of the Ulster Catholic community.;Although Yeats was descended from English colonists, he is hailed today as one of the greatest modern poets of the post-colonial world. In his poetry, Yeats fuses a colonial-aristocratic view of the Irish landscape with an attempt to "revive" a form of nationalism which had never previously existed in Ireland.;John Hewitt and his community are separated from the Anglo-Irish by class and religion, and the dispossessed Catholics through a strong colonial non-conformist heritage. In his poems, Hewitt observes the Irish landscape as alien, but he also justifies his ancestral claim on the land by showing how his forbears gave previously "useless land" the "shape of use.".;Seamus Heaney is a member of the minority Catholic community in Northern Ireland. Heaney worships the Irish landscape as a formidable goddess who demands that her native sons sacrifice themselves to her in order that she be restored to some pre-colonial "essence." By engaging in mental excavations of the landscape, Heaney uncovers Ireland's long colonial history. However, Heaney discovers that the simplistic divisions of politics and ethnic-religious identity are inadequate in describing his ever-expanding concept of Irish identity.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
