Writing Lough Derg: From William Carleton to Seamus Heaney

by Peggy O'Brien

Overview

The overarching purpose of this volume is to show how a discrete tradition of writing about Lough Derg, a pilgrimage site in northwest Ireland, helped contemporary Irish poets rescue free, metaphysical inquiry from the grip of nationalism. Linked with the supernatural pagan times, Lough Derg had by the early twentieth century become an icon of the fusion of the Catholic Church and the Irish nation. Surveying treatments of Lough Derg from William Carleton through Denis Devlin, Patrick Kavanaugh, and ultimately Seamus Heaney, Peggy O'Brien addresses the role of spirituality in an increasingly cosmopolitan, postmodern, post-Catholic Ireland. Her extended treatment of Heaney culminates in an insightful juxtaposition with the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, who also struggled with the conflation of Catholicism and patriotism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815630982
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	09/28/2006
Series:	Irish Studies
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.72(d)

About the Author

Peggy O'Brien is a poet and author of Sudden Thaw, a collection of poems. She is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

What People are Saying About This

Kevin Whelan

A scrupulous, sustained and beautifully written study of the troubled relationship between Irish writers and Catholicism which concludes with a superb study of the poetry of Seamus Heaney. (Kevin Whelan, Director of the Keough-Naughton Centre of the University of Notre Dame, Dublin)

Dillon Johnston

A highly original narrative about remarkable contemporary Catholic poetsPatrick Kavanagh, but especially Seamus Heaney in his relation to the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, and to Paul Muldoon, Eil´ean N´ ? Chuillean´ain, and Medbh McGuckian. . . . O'Brien fills the role of companion, midwife, psychoanalyst, Sherpa, border patrol, guide, and even, goad. As a talented poet herself, she guides us skillfully in this border district which is analogical, purgatorial, transitional, and finally unmappable. (Dillon Johnston, author of Irish Poetry after Joyce)