Abstract

Landscape is prevalently presented in early poetry of Seamus Heaney in the forms of landscape of natural ecology, farm practices and place-names. The landscape description is not only a way of nostalgia for the disappearing Irish natural scenes, but also contributes to deal with writer’s relationship with homeland and home culture, expressing his ambivalent feeling of being allied as well as alienated toward native traditional culture. Meanwhile, the landscape description is poetic transcendence as well as a retreat for Heaney to reconcile conflicts and keep a proper balance between artistic freedom and social responsibility.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.