Answer to Question #235275 in English for KAT

Question

Question : Comment on Heaney's relation with his landscape and how does his poetry reflect this connection between land and identity?

Answer 1

Haney's usually forms the basis for claims regarding the special relationship between place and identity in Gaelic life. It talks about the story of myth and historical legend related to a certain place, reflecting an understanding in which place and identity are inseparable and representing its landscape.

As Robinson (1996: p. 155) points out: “Place-names are the interlock of landscape and language”.

the shift of places reflects his writing trajectory and continuously evolving creative process. Starting from his

hometown—Mossbawn, and taking the growth of chestnut which are planted in front of the house at his birth as

metaphor, Seamus Heaney has presented Irish places and landscape with distinct Irish characteristics such as Anahorish, Broagh, Toome, Derrygarve and so on in his poetry. Meanwhile, Heaney expresses a deep concern.

With landscape as well as language in his collections, and regards art as a way of expressing Irishness as well as

a metaphor of identity. Heaney has shown and focused on the relationship among places, land-scape and identity, combining the land-division (such as fields, townships), place-names (Broagh, Toome),

landscape and cultural cognition in the same.