‘Reconciliation Under Duress’: The Architecture of Seamus Heaney’s Recent Poetry

Abstract

The relationship between Seamus Heaney’s poetry and the politics and history of Ireland has been the subject of much debate there. His international prominence has led critics North and South to question what version of his home ground it is that has gained him so many admirers abroad, and why his poetry is so appealing to an audience with little knowledge of Irish history or interest in its politics. Heaney has been accused of adopting a form of political quietism, one which does not offend a British or American audience of his work by making public declarations of dissatisfaction at the wrongs suffered on the part of the minority community in the North or on the part of Ireland historically. He has equally been accused of using that quietism to offer slyly an explicitly nationalist agenda, one which presumably appeals to left-thinking liberals from abroad looking for a native voice to echo their own righteous feelings of horror at the historical brutality of colonization.