Identity, language and culture in Seamus Heaney's The Haw Lantern

Abstract

The present paper attempts to study Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney’s poetic collection The Haw Lantern (1987) from postcolonial lens. The paper explores Heaney’s negotiations with the hegemony and the compromises and compensations which he makes in the process. It explores Heaney’s quest for reclaiming his original Irish identity which is profoundly imbedded in native culture. The desire and need of a single reliable version of the past and the need to revise past in the light of new historical circumstances are among the strategies employed by Heaney to re-write history and scrutinize the misrepresentations of Irish culture and traditions in hegemonic records. Heaney’s effort of dismantling the hegemony and deconstructing colonialism will also be dealt with.