Saints and Birdsla renovación de una escena medieval en la poesía de Seamus Heaney
ISSN: 0211-5913
Year of publication: 2006
Issue: 53
Pages: 123-136
Type: Article
More publications in: Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses
Abstract
Irish poet Seamus Heaney seems to use a traditionally Irish hermit situation as a poetic motif in order to explore man’s relation with nature and religion. Following a cognitive orientation, we will discuss two poems by Seamus Heaney which have a common initial structure based on the hermit motif: “Saint Francis and the Birds” (1966) and “Saint Kevin and the Blackbird” (1996). The poems will be approached through a cognitive poetics perspective mainly based on Gilles Fauconnier’s mental space model and Eve Sweetser’s findings on sensory perception and conceptualisation.