Military Imagery in Seamus Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist
Military Imagery in Seamus Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist

Summary/Abstract: Death of a Naturalist (1966), Heaney’s first volume of poetry, abounds in military imagery. This paper tries to examine all these war images in order to show why and how the poet uses them and why he should be obsessed with war while writing his first volume of poetry and while some thought he was not political at all, did not think of, and did not directly express his ideas about the Irish current conflicts. It clearly highlights war/military imagery and explains how the two important wars, that is, World War II and the long bloody conflicts between the Catholics and the Protestants in Ireland must have consciously or unconsciously affected the poet’s mind and art.

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