Postnationalist Identity and Sites of Memory in the Latest Work of Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Paul Durcan

摘要

In 1977 Seamus Heaney defined his "sense of place", a central concept in his own sense of identity, as "an equable marriage between the geographical country and the country of the mind" (1980 : 132). Since then Ireland has gone through dramatic socio-economic and historical changes that have brought about a complete transformation of the construct of Irish identity as well as of the role that memory plays in its definition. The aim of this article is to analyse how Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, and Paul Durcan, as coetaneous poets representative of a generation that has personally and artistically lived through the deep transformations of Ireland in the last few decades, reflect in their latest work their modified perceptions of the construct of Irishness in what a number of critics have referred to as the new postnationalist Irish context. Special attention is given to Seamus Heaney's District and Circle (2006), Derek Mahon's Harbour Lights (2005), and Paul Durcan 's The Art of Life (2004).