Following the life force, participating in one's evolution: Seamus Heaney's poetic treatment of grief through the poem, Sunlight

摘要

Set in Irish cultural and historical contexts, this study of Seamus Heaney's treatment of grief in the poem, Sunlight, draws upon his selected images and their effects relative to the seven or more "presses of literature" discovered by the Emeritus Professor of Performance Studies, founder of Biopoetics, and Registered Poetry Therapist, Leland Roloff. How does this image press upon the composer? How does it press upon the reader? With these key questions, the study examines and finds the soul-mending powers of this poem, a traditional medical art in Irish and Eastern European cultures.