<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney is celebrated for his rich verses recalling his home in the Northern Irish countryside of County Derry. Yet while the imaginative links to nature in his poetry have already been critically explored, little attention has been paid so far to his rendering of local food and foodways. From ploughing, digging potatoes and butter-churning to picking blackberries, Heaney sketches not only the everyday activities of mid-20th century rural Ireland, but also the social dynamics of community and identity and the socio-natural symbiosis embedded in those practices. Larger questions of love, life and death also infiltrate the scenes, as they might in life, through hints of sectarian divisions and memories of famine.</p><p>This essay proposes a gastrocritical reading of Heaney’s poetry to study these topics in particularly meaningful ways. Gastrocriticism is a nascent critical approach to literature that applies the insights gained in Food Studies to literary writings, investigating the relationship of humans to each other and to nature as played out through the prism of food, or as Heaney wrote: “Things looming large and at the same time [...] pinned down in the smallest detail.”</p></abstract>

Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney is celebrated for his rich verses recalling his home in the Northern Irish countryside of County Derry. Yet while the imaginative links to nature in his poetry have already been critically explored, little attention has been paid so far to his rendering of local food and foodways. From ploughing, digging potatoes and butter-churning to picking blackberries, Heaney sketches not only the everyday activities of mid-20th century rural Ireland, but also the social dynamics of community and identity and the socio-natural symbiosis embedded in those practices. Larger questions of love, life and death also infiltrate the scenes, as they might in life, through hints of sectarian divisions and memories of famine.This essay proposes a gastrocritical reading of Heaney’s poetry to study these topics in particularly meaningful ways. Gastrocriticism is a nascent critical approach to literature that applies the insights gained in Food Studies to literary writings, investigating the relationship of humans to each other and to nature as played out through the prism of food, or as Heaney wrote: “Things looming large and at the same time [...] pinned down in the smallest detail.”

“My Palate Hung With Starlight” – A Gastrocritical Reading of Seamus Heaney’s Poetry

East-West Cultural Passage

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney is celebrated for his rich verses recalling his home in the Northern Irish countryside of County Derry. Yet while the...

“My Palate Hung With Starlight” – A Gastrocritical Reading of Seamus Heaney’s Poetry

Published Online: Mar 17, 2020

Page range: 14 - 39

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ewcp-2019-0010

Keywords
gastrocriticism, Seamus Heaney, food studies, Ireland, foodways, georgic poetry

© 2019 Anke Klitzing, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

“My Palate Hung With Starlight” – A Gastrocritical Reading of Seamus Heaney’s Poetry

Published Online: Mar 17, 2020

Page range: 14 - 39

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ewcp-2019-0010

Keywordsgastrocriticism, Seamus Heaney, food studies, Ireland, foodways, georgic poetry

© 2019 Anke Klitzing, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
gastrocriticism, Seamus Heaney, food studies, Ireland, foodways, georgic poetry