Northern Irish Poetry and Theology

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Gail McConnell

   Pages 1-23

3. Religion and Identity Politics in Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry: The Critical Landscape

   • Gail McConnell

   Pages 24-51

4. ‘Its flesh was sweet / Like thickened wine’: Iconography and Sacramentalism in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney

   • Gail McConnell

   Pages 52-121

5. ‘A hole / In the cathedral wall’: Iconoclasm and Catechism in the Poetry of Michael Longley

   • Gail McConnell

   Pages 122-181

6. ‘The only way out of “the tongue-tied profanity”’: Calvinism, Rupture and Revision in the Poetry of Derek Mahon

   • Gail McConnell

   Pages 182-235

7. Back Matter

   Pages 236-261

   PDF

Northern Irish Poetry and Theology argues that theology shapes subjectivity, language and poetic form, and provides original studies of three internationally acclaimed poets: Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon.

• identity
• poetry
• religion
• British and Irish Literature

“McConnell skilfully provides a compelling analysis of a wide range of poetry from each of the writers, contrasting and comparing their diverging approaches to writing, to theology, and to their position within their own histories. Northern Irish Poetry and Theology is an important and challenging document within contemporary criticism which will provoke as many questions as it answers and which clearly situates Gail McConnell as a key figure within upcoming Northern Irish criticism.” (Kirsten Kearney, Literature and Theology, Vol. 30 (1), March, 2016)

Gail McConnell is Lecturer in English at Queen's University Belfast, UK. She has published in The Irish Review and contributed to The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry.

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