‘Black butter melting and opening underfoot’: the ‘peat harvest’ in Irish literature and culture

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dc.contributor.authorO'Connor, Maureen
dc.contributor.authorGearey, Benjamin
dc.date.accessioned2022-11-07T13:31:26Z
dc.date.available2022-11-07T13:31:26Z
dc.date.issued2021-02-24
dc.date.updated2022-10-28T14:09:04Z
dc.description.abstractIn this paper, we discuss ‘turf-cutting’, or the ‘harvest’ of peat, a centuries-long agricultural practice in Ireland. Although healthy peatlands are known to be carbon sinks, calls for the end of peat cutting are controversial in a country still largely defined by rural traditions. We consider the relationship between peat, peat cutting and identity: the ‘bog’ features significantly in literature and has played a central role in notions of a specifically gendered version of ‘authentic’ Irishness. The cutting of peat exposes and destroys cultural heritage in the form of the archaeological record, and we contrast this reality with the representation of peat cutting in the poetry of Seamus Heaney. We then focus on the fiction of Edna O’Brien, for whom the bog is precious, meaningful, culturally and aesthetically, when left in its undisturbed state, or when explored to connect to the past rather than fuel patriarchal desiresen
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionPublished Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationO’Connor, M. and Gearey, B. (2020) ‘“Black butter melting and opening underfoot”: the “peat harvest” in Irish literature and culture’, Green Letters, 24(4), pp. 381–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2021.1878049en
dc.identifier.eissn2168-1414
dc.identifier.endpage390en
dc.identifier.issn1468-8417
dc.identifier.issued3en
dc.identifier.journaltitleGreen Letters: Studies in Ecocriticismen
dc.identifier.startpage381en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/13825
dc.identifier.volume24en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherTaylor & Francisen
dc.relation.urihttps://doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2021.1878049
dc.rights© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any wayen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/en
dc.subjectPeaten
dc.subjectEcocriticismen
dc.subjectSeamus Heaneyen
dc.subjectEdna O’Brienen
dc.subjectArchaeologyen
dc.subjectIrelanden
dc.title‘Black butter melting and opening underfoot’: the ‘peat harvest’ in Irish literature and cultureen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
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