Writing Identity: the Case of Seamus Heaney

MIGUEL A. MONTEZANTI

Buenos Aires

Simposio; Second Symposium of Irish Studies in South America; 2007

Irish Embassy; Universidad Nacional de La Pampa

The Ordnance Survey of 1824 erased the Gaelic names from Ireland and substituted English ones. This is of special significance when dealing with Seamus Heaney’s work, since one genre he cultivates is the dinnseanchas, poems inspired by geographical names. Toponymy, writing, language, alphabet, are inextricably mixed in Seamus Heaney’s concerns with the sense of identity. But can Heaney meditate genuinely on these problems through English, his “mother” tongue? No easy answer is within reach; mere nationalism deprived of a careful consideration of cultural history would result in a simplification. And identity problems are too complex to allow that. My paper is an account of these intricacies through the analysis of a couple of poems belonging to Heaney’s early collections. [Nota: Se anexa en traducción castellana, que fue enviada a Bitácora (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba) y aceptado para publicación].