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Image of Territory in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry

Seamus Heaney has been treasured as one of the representative Irish poets after W. B. Yeats in the British literary world. While Yeats tries to idealize and romaticize Ireland from the Irish cultural nationalist position, Heaney himself argues that he is the anti-Yeatsian and attempts to subvert the established English poetic tradition and the mainstream literary power. That is to say, rather than focusing directlyon particular events from the present to the future, he concentrates primarily on the origins and hinterland of the conflict, celebrating Irish identity, history, territory, and tongue of Irish grassroots. This is derived from a farming tradition which involved affirmative or negative productivity to a sheltered area, feeding them on a minimum diet under the British colonial domination. In this sense, Heaney’s poetry could become a force, almost a mode of power. As he commented, the power-whether poetic or political- is achieved through linguistic and cultural authenticity of poetry rather than through in front door with an academic skill. His resistance through writing is not from the reductionism but from the receptivity toward rich tradition, so-called bog culture. Finally, this poetic reception of the colonial experiences in poor condition is deeply rooted in his realistic consciousness and it is represented through his motherland or bog land.