Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 3. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 29)

Péter Dolmányos: An Outline of the Relationship Between Romanticism and Contemporary Irish Poetry

An Outline of the Relationship Between Romanticism and Contemporary Irish Poetry Péter Dolmányos Continuities between Romanticism and contemporary poetry are multi farious. In the Irish context there is almost a straight line connecting Romanticism with the contemporary scene. The Literary Revival was governed by a Romantic aesthetic, its yearning for the unspoilt Irish landscape and its mythologising of the peasant and the rural are ample proofs of this. Turbulent times facilitate the politicisation of poetry

—the Revival is an obvious example of this. The specific cultural and political context of contemporary Northern Ireland has driven critics as well as readers to press poets for a public statement rooted in private exp erience, perhaps not without an eye on Shelley's idea about the role of poets in relation to their communities. On the technical level this in volves the device of the autobiographical persona, which is a frequent element of contemporary poetry inherited from the Romantics. * Seamus Heaney begins his essay 'Feeling into Words' with a quotation from The Prelude, the part about Wordsworth's 'hiding places':. The hiding places of my power Seem open; I approach and then they close; I see by glimpses now; when age comes on, May scarcely see at all, and I would give, While yet we may, as far as words can give, A substance and a life to what I feel: I would enshrine the spirit of the past For future restoration. The short explanation for the quotation is as follows: 1 Cf. Wills, C. Improprieties. Politics and Sexuality in Northern Irish Poetry. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993. F.ger |ourna] of English Studies, Volume III, 2002 11-23