Writing Lough Derg: From William Carleton to Seamus Heaney

peggy o/brien

The overarching purpose of this volume is to show how a discrete tradition of writing about Lough Derg, a pilgrimage site in northwest Ireland, helped contemporary Irish poets rescue free, metaphysical inquiry from the grip of nationalism. Linked with the supernatural pagan times, Lough Derg had by the early twentieth century become an icon of the fusion of the Catholic Church and the Irish nation. Surveying treatments of Lough Derg from William Carleton through Denis Devlin, Patrick Kavanaugh, and ultimately Seamus Heaney, Peggy O'Brien addresses the role of spirituality in an increasingly cosmopolitan, postmodern, post-Catholic Ireland. Her extended treatment of Heaney culminates in an insightful juxtaposition with the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, who also struggled with the conflation of Catholicism and patriotism.

Genres

342 pages, Paperback

First published September 18,2006

Series

Irish Studies, Syracuse University Press

Places

lough derg, ireland,

This edition

Format: 342 pages, Paperback
Published: September 18, 2006 by Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815630982
ASIN: 0815630980
Language: English

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Seamus Heaney

Seamus Justin Heaney MRIA (1939 - 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume....
Czesław Miłosz

Czesław Miłosz (1911 - 2004) was a Polish-Lithuanian poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy called Miłosz a writ...
William Carleton

William Carleton (1794 - 1869) was an Irish writer and novelist. He is best known for his Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, a collection of ethnic sketches of the stereotypical Irishman....
Patrick Kavanagh

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Denis Devlin

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