A backdrop to Heaney : an outline of Irish political history

Abstract

Whenever an author is to be studied in some depth, an understanding of his formative influences is always important, and must necessarily be obtained before the poetry is actually evaluated. It would be, to take a somewhat extreme example, quite difficult to obtain a proper response to Chaucer's poetry unless the medieval mind and the medieval world are first understood. With a poet like Seamus Heaney who uses English as his linguistic vehicle, but whose subjects, expression, and feelings are Irish, it becomes essential to understand his received culture and the mentality generated by his ethnic origin. That which may, for convenience, be called his 'Irishness', has to be comprehended if his poems are, in many cases, to make any sense at all. The problem is by no means simple, for there are, in fact, two Irelands, and Heaney is very much the product of each one separately as he is of the rift that lies between them, of the centuries-old antagonisms that have riven Ireland asunder. It is the present intention to provide a simplified and somewhat selective outline of Irish political history, and since Anglo-Irish strife has been a dominant feature and a shaping force of Irish history, all events prior to its origin shall be ignored; similarly literary influences, which may be traced back to Druidic times, may be tackled in a separate paper.