Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

English Language and Literature Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Technological University Dublin

Seamus Heaney

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

‘Gilded Gravel In The Bowl’: Ireland’S Cuisine And Culinary Heritage In The Poetry Of Seamus Heaney, Anke Klitzing Aug 2021

‘Gilded Gravel In The Bowl’: Ireland’S Cuisine And Culinary Heritage In The Poetry Of Seamus Heaney, Anke Klitzing

Articles

Seamus Heaney’s poetry is rich in detail about agricultural and food practices in his native Northern Ireland from the 1950s onwards, such as cattle-trading, butter-churning, eel-fishing, blackberry-picking or home-baking. Often studied from an ecocritical perspective, the abundance of agricultural and culinary scenes in Heaney’s work makes a gastrocritical focus on food and foodways suitable. Food has been recognized as a highly condensed social fact, and writers have long tapped into its multi-layered meanings to illuminate socio-cultural circumstances, making literature a valuable ethnographic source. A gastrocritical reading of Heaney’s work from 1966 to 2010, drawing on Rozin’s Structure of Cuisine, shows …


My Palate Hung With Starlight: A Gastrocritical Reading Of Seamus Heaney’S Poetry, Anke Klitzing Dec 2019

My Palate Hung With Starlight: A Gastrocritical Reading Of Seamus Heaney’S Poetry, Anke Klitzing

Articles

Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney is celebrated for his rich verses recalling his home in the Northern Irish countryside of County Derry. Yet while the imaginative links to nature in his poetry have already been critically explored, little attention has been paid so far to his rendering of local food and foodways. From ploughing, digging potatoes and butter-churning to picking blackberries, Heaney sketches not only the everyday activities of mid-20th century rural Ireland, but also the social dynamics of community and identity and the socio-cultural symbiosis embedded in those practices. Larger questions of love, life and death also infiltrate the …