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Subject Area: Literature - Irish
Atfield, Joy Rosemary2007 0-7734-5391-1 168 pages
This book is a study of the poetry of Seamus Heaney collected in his volume Opened Ground, in which the poems are read in Jungian terms. Heaney had referred to himself as “Jungian in religion” and naturally used terms such as “initiation”, “individuation” and the “unconscious” in interviews and essays. Therefore, key Jungian terms are examined in relation to Heaney’s poetic expression of these and explored through at least one poem from each of the collections represented in Opened Ground. This allows for an exploration of the creative tensions involved in the poet’s presentation of personal, poetic and political concerns, while also allowing for further examination of the powerful physicality and musical qualities of the language in which he luxuriates.