Death of a Naturalist Flashcards
What is Heaney described as?
‘The most important Irish poet since Yeats’
Where was Heaney born?
Tamniaran - northern Ireland
What was Heaney surrounded by a lot of?
Nature
Who, close to Heaney, was killed and when?
His brother Christopher was killed in 1953/1954.
When was Death of a Naturalist written?
1966.
What was happening in Ireland during the time it was written and how does the poem show this?
The ‘troubles’ which split Irish society, hence the 2 distinctive stanzas - one full of innocence, one full of violence.
Which 2 ‘lost worlds’ does the poem reflect?
The narrator’s lost world of innocence but also a lost world of Irish life and identity.
Heaney became a leader for a new kind of romantic poetry which included what?
Poetry in which nature/the natural world are used to describe emotion and phsychology.
What 3 poems are good to compare Death of a Naturalist with?
-To Autumn/Hawk Roosting
-The Prelude/Afternoons
-Dulce/Mametz Wood
Give 4 features of the poem’s form and their effect:
It’s written in first person and blank verse which makes it sound personal and conversational. Iambic pentameter is not always secure with it often over-spilling 11 syllables, perhaps reflecting the richness of nature and unpredictability of change. Enjambment conveys the narrators enthusiasm as well as nature’s inability to be constrained.
‘All year the ____ -____ ____ in the ____ of the ____;’
‘All year the flax-dam festered in the heart of the townland;’
‘Flax had ____ there.’
‘Flax had rotted there.’
‘Daily it ________ in the ________ sun.’
‘Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.’
‘Bubbles _______ delicately’
‘Bubbles gargled delicately’
‘___________ wove a ____ gauze of ____’
‘bluebottles wove a strong gauze of sound’