CONFLUENCE OF REALITY, HISTORY AND MYTHOLOGY IN SEAMUS HEANEY: READING AT A POTATO DIGGING AND THE TOLLUND MAN

Richard Murphy, an Irish poet, has described Seamus Heaney as “the poet who has shown the finest art in presenting a coherent vision of Ireland, past and present.” (1348, Major 20th-century Writers: A Selection of Sketches from Contemporary Authors, Volume 2) A general consensus among critics is that Heaney is one of the two great Irish poets, the other being W. B. Yeats. It is only natural and understandable that Heaney’s works should have attracted relentless critical attention. However, the fusion of reality, history and mythology in “At a Potato Digging” and “The Tollund Man” has somehow escaped the critical dragnet. My paper is a modest attempt at providing a corrective to the situation. The paper tries to identify the specific strands of reality, history and mythology that are interwoven together to form the fabric of the poems and analyse how these three strands are seamlessly tied up together