THE PARISH AND THE WORLD IN IRISH POETRY
THE PARISH AND THE WORLD IN IRISH POETRY

Summary/Abstract: Starting with Patrick Kavanagh's distinction between the parish and the province as source and audience for poetry, the essay goes on to Seamus Heaney's essay 'The Sense of Place', to revisit his question of how particular to Irish writing these concerns are. It looks at Irish placenames for their familiarity or obscurity, and the extent to which they can be accounted for by origins in the Irish language or the historical experience of Ireland. It argues that the same questions of fidelity to origin or unfamiliarity arise in the famously successful twentieth-century Irish short story as in poetry, as well as in drama, concluding that this well-worked seam remains strikingly productive.

• Details
• Contents