The redress of poetry heaney s use of mythology and its social and political dimension

Abstract

Irish poet laureate Seamus Heaney chose the past of mythology in order to collaborate his contemporary time with the remote past. Heaney consciously used the living past of mythology in order to relate and interpret his contemporary time. In his mission to redress poetry, or we may say nursing the wound of poetry, Heaney used mythology as a device to dig into the past in order to offer an archaeology of the present, and concurrently blend these individual diverted poles of human history. And he also delineates how myth personified itself so as to interpret both the social and political proportions intensely. Unlike the poets before him, Heaney reflected myth in his poetry in quite an enormous way. Hardly any other poet had tried to register in his/ her poetry the myths of different continents of Europe by becoming the collector of myth, and tradition as well. Such archaeology as used by the poet in the order of discourse paves the way for interpenetration of the aesthetics and the politics. Heaney s preoccupation with ancient traditions and myths of different continents of Europe, particularly Norse and Icelandic sagas, has helped him in becoming the collector of myth, and tradition which operates as the epistemic bulwark of his poetry. newline