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Heaney’s hauntings: Archaeology, poetry and the ‘gendered bog'
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Date
2020-09-22
Authors
Everett, Rosie
Gearey, Benjamin R.
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Taylor and Francis
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Abstract
In this paper we discuss the entangled relationship between literary creation, archaeology and representations of gender in the poetry of Seamus Heaney, in particular the ‘bog poems’ The Tollund Man and Bogland. We trace the early formative connections between the poet, peatlands and ‘bog body’ research, in which both literary critical and archaeological scholars have analysed themes including ‘the bog as archive’, theory and practice of archaeology and the process of poetic creation and imagining in Heaney’s writings. We discuss archaeological perspectives on Heaney’s poetry, and outline literary critique that has problematised the representation of gender in the ‘bog poems’. Finally, we consider the poem Bogland and read this through the lens of Irish peatland archaeology, in particular its destruction by industrial peat extraction. To conclude, we reflect how Heaney’s poetry as a form of archaeological knowledge and narratives must continue to be subject to ‘excavation’, contextual readings and critique.
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Keywords
Archaeology , Poetry , Bog bodies , Seamus Heaney
Citation
Everett, R. and Gearey, B. (2020) 'Heaney’s Hauntings: Archaeology, Poetry and the ‘Gendered Bog’', Journal of Wetland Archaeology, (12 pp). doi: 10.1080/14732971.2020.1823148
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© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Wetland Archaeology on 22 Sep 2020, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14732971.2020.1823148020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Wetland Archaeology on 22 Sep 2020, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14732971.2020.1823148