"Seamus Heaney's Poetry and the Modern Self: A Consciousness Rising on Behalf of Unpopular Ideas"

Abstract

To write an article on Seamus Heaney (1939-2014) might be a venture, given the many contributions to this field. Seamus Heaney's poetic career (1966-2010) went in search of answers to questions that were raised out of a preoccupation with the notion of selfhood. On the other hand, in the early modern period, certain thinkers associated with para-scientific literature confidently proclaim a vulnerable theory of selfhood which raises questions about the authenticity of the western traditional and classical understandings of the self. This study argues that Heaney's approach to poetry constructs a theory of the self which can be read as a revision of the illegitimate conception of humanity proposed in the twentieth century, one which has a continuing effect on contemporary thought, and makes the common-sense experience of the reality we live in both more widely understood and acknowledged.