REPRESENTATION OF VIOLENCE IN THE TROUBLES POETRY OF SEAMUS HEANEY

Abstract

This thesis studies Seamus Heaney’s Troubles poetry from the perspective of violence theory and argues that these poems represent violence performed and experienced during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Violence theory defines violence as a concept that causes multiple harm at individual and collective levels. In fact, violence denies the human qualities of any individual or community to prevent people from realising their full potential. The violence theory also classifies violence according to the form and impact of violence under three categories, namely physical, structural, and cultural violence. While physical violence is about physical attacks of which results are immediate, visible, and useful to create a sense of fear among individuals and at the community level. Moreover, structural violence refers to social, economic, and political policies and practices. The other form is cultural violence, which is about policies and practices on cultural elements such as language, religion, and customs to distort individual or collective identity as well as to justify practices of the two other violence forms. Heaney’s selected poems engage with the destructive effects of these forms of violence and make the violence of the Troubles more visible. Accordingly, Chapter I analyses the representation of physical forms of violence, the deaths and injuries caused by killings, torturing, bombings, beatings in the poems "Limbo" from Wintering Out (1972), “Punishment”, “The Grauballe Man”, “Summer 1969” from North (1975), and “Casualty” from Field Work (1979) and shows that Heaney's poems of physical violence foreground the physical violence communities were subjected to during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Chapter II examines structural and cultural forms of violence. “For the Commander of the Eliza” from Death of a Naturalist (1966), “Requiem for the Croppies” from Door into the Dark (1969), “The Toome Road” from Field Work (1979), and “From the Frontier of Writing” from The Haw Lantern (1987) are examined under the structural forms of violence. Chapter II demonstrates that Heaney represents the structural form of violence as injustice and discrimination resulting from the political and social structure of Northern Ireland. Heaney's poems also focus on the British colonial policies related to the religion, language, and customs of Northern Ireland as cultural forms of violence in “Traditions” from Wintering Out (1972), “Whatever You Say Say Nothing” and “Funeral Rites” from North (1975). This thesis concludes that Heaney's Troubles poetry examines violence under the physical, structural, and cultural forms of and makes violence resulting from the Troubles more visible and functions as the voice of the victims.