Heaney+Sheers Context

Question 1

What’s Ulster?

Answer 1

One of the four Irish provinces: Ulster, Munster, Connacht, Leinster

Question 2

What is the United Kingdom made up of?

Answer 2

England
Scotland
Wales
Northern Ireland

Question 3

When were the Irish Troubles?

Answer 3

1968-1998

Question 4

What was the key issue of the Irish Troubles?

Answer 4

the constitutional status of Northern Ireland

Question 5

Explain the two main sides in the Irish troubles and what they wanted.

Answer 5

UNIONISTS (most likely Ulster PROTESTANTS) wanted Northern Ireland to REMAIN with the United Kingdom

Irish NATIONALISTS (mostly Irish CATHOLICS) wanted Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and join a UNITED IRELAND

Question 6

Where did Heaney grow up?

Answer 6

County Derry, Northern Ireland

Question 7

When did Heaney live in Belfast?

Answer 7

1957 - 1972

Question 8

When was Fieldwork published and where was Heaney living when he wrote it.

Answer 8

Published 1979

Written whilst living in County Wicklow, Eastern Ireland (moved there in 1972)

Question 9

Heaney’s parentage…

X

Answer 9

contained both the Ireland of the cattle-herding Gaelic past and the
Ulster of the Industrial Revolution;
he considered this to have been a significant tension in his background.

Question 10

Poems such as “Bogland” and “Bog Queen”…

Answer 10

addressed political struggles directly for the first time

Question 11

In Field Work Heaney unifies form and content…

about Heaney’s craft, function of the poet

Answer 11

In Field Work Heaney unifies form and content to create a voice that addresses not only traditional thees of love and nature but also themes relating to the contemporary social and political upheaval. This voice does not provide solutions, rather it forces us to share the great human emotions which bring us together : sorrow, love, sympathy, wonder, anguish.

Question 12

Whilst Heaney’s move to Wicklow indicates…

Answer 12

Whilst Heaney’s move to Wicklow indicates a withdrawal from the political commitment to fight the British presence in Ireland, Field Work indicates rather a growing commitment to stay engaged, but to do so by maintaining the long view. - Weiner

Question 13

In an interview with Frank Kinhan, Heaney said Fieldwork was…

Answer 13

“was an attempt to try to do something deliberately’’

'’to turn his writing closer to my own speaking voice.’’

Question 14

O’Donoghue says readers may be ‘disappointed’ with Fieldwork because

Answer 14

Fieldwork is notably less political than North.

Question 15

Glanmore sonnets short critic quote

Answer 15

They are the ‘heart’ of the collection - Weiner

Question 16

North was the first of his works that…

It looks frequently…

Answer 16

first of his works that directly dealt with the Troubles (1968-1998) in Northern Ireland

it looks frequently to the past for images and symbols relevant to the violence and political unrest of that time.

Question 17

In North, Heaney draws connections between…

Answer 17

the past and the present by using bog body’s, symbols of the violence of the past to comment on contemporary violence and political unrest.

Question 18

Lit crit on poet’s relationship with politics in Fieldwork

Answer 18

“interrogates the relationship between the poet and his mixed political and literary tradition’’ - Deane

Question 19

In North, Heaney sacraficed

X

Answer 19

The dense richely crafted language from his earlier collections for a looser language to communicate about the Ulster troubles. Critic Lloyd believes this style ‘does not achieve the same resonance and depth’.

Question 20

Heaney’s collection ‘Wintering Out’ demonstrates

link to ‘The Toome Road’

Answer 20

his commitment to rooting his poetry in the Irish landscape.

Heaney uses place names to develop a sense of community and forge a connection with the Irish past.

Question 21

In Wintering Out, place name poems were…

Answer 21

place-name poems were a mode of acknowledging his own Irish origins, even while doing so in the English language.

Question 22

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when…

Answer 22

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the sectarian violence of the Troubles was on the rise, Heaney felt pressure to act as a spokesperson for the Catholic minority of Northern Ireland.

Question 23

Eagleton described Heaney as

Answer 23

“an enlightened cosmopolitan liberal”

Question 24

Toibin describes Heaney’s poems as poems of

Answer 24

‘poems of rich evocation and description’

Question 25

Robert Lowell described Heaney as

Answer 25

“the most important Irish poet since Yeats”

Question 26

Heaney’s work can be seen as the product of internal…

Answer 26

Heaney’s work can be seen as the product of internal conflict whilst trying to balance craft of a poet with a pressure to engage with politics

Question 27

X

Answer 27

X

Question 28

X

Answer 28

X

Question 29

X

Answer 29

X

Question 30

X

Answer 30

X

Question 31

Themes Sheers sees in Skirrid Hill

Answer 31

‘the ongoing dialogue between man and nature, the fraying of love’ and ‘questions of failed articulacy’