Nature as Listener and Consoler in Post-Classical Irish Poetry.

Abstract

From earliest medieval times the land and nature are depicted in Irish poetry as the chieftain’s spouse, a sovereignty goddess in conjugal relationship with the ruling lord. [...] While that imagery, which proliferates in the Irish poetic tradition, can never be far away in any discussion of Irish nature poetry, it will not be the focus of this paper. Instead, an attempt will be made to shed light on the relationship between poetic voice and physical environment in the poetry of address and dialogue, where the poets speak, not to a woman personifying the land, but directly to aspects of nature itself. Some representative poems of address will be examined and it will be argued that nature is sometimes presented in seventeenth-century poetry as a distant and only potentially responsive auditor, while, in the eighteenth century, nature becomes a responding consoler who brings an authoritative message of hope. The textual commentary will be preceded by a broad discussion on the methodological challenges posed by post-classical poetry in Irish for the contemporary critic, and it will suggest a critical framework for examining the role of the natural environment in these poems of address.