The Body as Ethical Synecdoche in the Writing of Seamus Heaney

Abstract

This essay examines the imaginative use of images of the violently abused body in the writing of Seamus Heaney. Looking at The Cure at Troy and The Burial at Thebes, this essay also looks at real bodies – victims of the violence in Northern Ireland – those of the Kingmsills massacre and Robert McCartney. The ethical import of a bruised and abused body is a strong trope in Heaney’s work and the conflation between ethics, aesthetic and politics in terms of the body is explored.