Topic- seamus heaney's treatment of marginalized
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SEAMUS HEANEY INTRODUCTION
Seamus Heaney (born 1939), Nobel Prize winner in 1995, is possibly the foremost poet in the
English-speaking world. He has produced thirteen collections of poetry spanning the years 1966 to
2010, all of which have been critically and commercially popular. His work is widely quoted, and there
have been some fifty monographs and collections written about his poetry, with articles and reviews in
the hundreds if not the thousands at this stage. He has also known for a very well-received translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, which was
very well received and which won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 2000 – a very rare achievement
for a book of poetry.
His work has been widely quoted in the public sphere, and his lines from The Cure at Troy : “. . . and
hope and history rhyme. His poetry has
chronicled the personal and societal development in Ireland over the last forty years or so, and he has
written about political and social problems and issues in both poetry and prose. he had been awarded the Nobel Prize: “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth,
which exalt everyday miracles and the living past”, and he
voices concerns and attitudes which resonate with the concerns of Irish people His work is both critically
acclaimed and also popular, with sales that rival some novelists.
Seamus heaney who belongs to the Catholic community shares the minority status in the northern Ireland. His concern for the minority or the marginalised can be relised in his poetry. In order to explain heaney's poems in terms of treatment of the marginalised let's understand the term marginalisation first.
What is Marginalization
In general the term marginalization describes the over actions or tendencies
of human societies where people perceive to under reliable or without useful
fiction are excluded, i.e. marginalized. The people who are marginalized are
outside the existing system of protectionand integration. This limits their
opportunities and means for survival. The term defined marginalization can be in
the following ways-( )
1) Peter Leonard defines -“Marginality as being outside the mainstream of
productive activity.”
2) Latin observes - “Marginality is so thoroughly demeaning, for economic
well-being , for human dignity as well as for physical security marginal peoples
can always be identified by the members of dominant society and will face
irrevocable discrimination.”
3) The encyclopedia of public health defines - “Marginalization as to be
marginalized is to be placed in the margins as thus excluded from the privilege and
power found at the center.”
4) Merriam Webster’s online dictionary defines the term marginalization as “To
relegate to a un important or powerless position within a society or group”.
) Ghana S Gurung and Michael Kallmair mentions,” The concept of
marginality is generally, used to analysis socio-economic, political and cultural
spheres, where disadvantaged people struggle to gain access to resources and full
participation in social life. In other words marginalized people might be socially,
economically, politically and legally ignored, excluded or neglected and therefore
vulnerable to live hood change.
In the poem "Punishment" Heaney suffers from guilt for compromising with silence, for just being a silent observer, for his failure to stop vengeance and violence of Ira. The poem specifically focuses upon a body that had been found buried in the peat bug for around 2000 years ago. known as windeby girl dug up in 1952 in Germany. was thought have been ritually killed Her hare had been shaved, band covered her eyes and a halter tied her neck.
In the poem Heaney refers the bog body as an adulterous who was killed for transgressing the unwritten tribals law. he condemns the such killings of the humans for unwritten laws or breaking the taboos.
Metaphorically heaney uses bog body and death of the girl as a modern ira who have been punished for being close to the British army, her had been shaved and banded her eyes and tied them with railing by The Irish Republican army.
Heaney expresses his sympathy for windeby girl calling her "my poor scapegoat" referring to the Bible where is scapegoat refers to the someone who gets blame for others have done.
At the Same time Heaney feels disappointment for being a silent observer, in terms of the definition of marginalisation we find to relegate an unimportant and powerless position in the society which he feels actually.
In the poem "The Railway children" Heaney suggests the idea of children who belong To marginalised section of the society use to play on the Railway bridg wondering to see the sizzling of the wires and how words travel through his childhood memory putting some light upon the consciousness of the innocents to the experience, how yhe things change when maturity comes.
and
in 'Tradition', where he claims that the 'guttural muse' was bullied by the 'alliterative traditions' of English. Heaney compensates for the bullying through the mention of Leopald Bloom to claim compensation through literature for stereotyping and branding Irish people as 'other' in the colonial English literature. Edmund Spender and Shakespeare, for Heaney, were the masters who misrepresented Irish people in their works. One of the concerns of the postcolonialism is to critically analyze the representations of natives as 'other' in a colonial text. The natives have always been presented in negative shades in the works of colonizers. In 'Stations of the West' (5), the poet is unable to compensate emotionally to the loss of Gaelic language in the Gaeltacht region. Heaney also compensates for the linguistic hegemony of English through poems such as 'Anahorish', 'Fodder', 'Toome' and 'Broagh' of Irish 'dinnseanchas'. It is a tradition about the sounds of a word, its pronunciation and usage, and the people who use it. The relationship between Ireland and England is like the relationship between a victim and a rapist. Poems such as 'Ocean's Love to Ireland' and 'Act of Union' present the marginalization of Irish civilization through the forceful imposition of masculine strength of England over Ireland. The psychological scars of colonial neurosis are dealt with in the poems. Heaney exposes the real motives behind the White man's burden. In 'Orange Drums, Tyrone, 1966', Heaney exposes the divide and rule policy of Orangism which created divisions among the Protestants and Catholics in Stations (1975). The sectarian violence and the ideological divisions are dealt wath in 'July' which carries forward the
theme of psychological pressure on the minority community by the Protestants through the Orange Drums parade. However the position of the speaker-poet is somewhat compromised with the awareness of his being of the minority community and hence no endeavour is made for compensations in the poem. The parades remind the poet of their defeat. The poet feels like a 'double agent' among the political big concepts in 'England's Difficulty' suggesting the colonial politics of divisions between the unionists and nationalists. His prayer is for a peaceful society where the world is not choked with blood .
conclusion
Heaney's poetry mirrors the plight of the marginahzation of Irish people and the impact of colonization on the culture, traditions, identity, langiiage and economy of Northern Ireland and throws into relief the attitude of hegemonic societies. His negotiations are based around the binaries of metropolis/periphery, self/other, colonizer/colonized, England/Ireland. The major impact of centuries of colonization on Ireland has been the fragmentation of the Irish identity. Treatment of the marginalized is quite sympathetic.
bibliography
https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-Punishment-by-Seamus-Heaney https://vinhanley.com/2015/09/21/the-treatment-of-women-in-seamus-heaneys-poetry-a-feminist-critique/
