• nature
• femininity
• bogs
• politics
• Seamus Heaney

The purpose of the following thesis is to address some of the major themes in Seamus Heaney’s poetry and to include him into the fan of those ecocritical contemporary movements that have been gradually intensifying from the second half of the twentieth century. The research will show how the rupture between human and non-human has threatened the very identity of Ireland and of the “sense of place” to which Heaney will turn to so many times during his literary career. From some initial clarifications on the literary events that led to modern-day ecocriticism, the thesis will introduce the poetic figure of Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and his path to the discovery of his poetic self. The dissertation will be mostly concerned with the topics of bogs and their ethic and cultural importance, the conception of the relationship between the Irish and their land, the poet’s use of animals, water and his own poetical translation of the political situation of the 1960s onwards.