Published Online:June 2024
Product Name:The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type:Article
Product Code:IJES040624
Author Name:Aarushi Upadhyay, Reena Singh and Madhumita Chakraborty
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Arts and Humanities
Download Format:PDF
Pages:10
Space has various meanings; while sometimes it can be expansive, at others it can be condensed into a particular frame. When power comes into question, space is internalized and subsequently challenged. The spaces of Seamus Heaney’s writings are an extension of the wide expanse of the space of Ireland in general. The geographical spaces project fault lines distributed across religious, political and social grounds, and Heaney’s poetry broadens this view of the Northern and Southern Ireland, trying to reestablish the lost Irish identity, entangled within the complexities of history and culture. Through the recollections of childhood, Heaney dwells on the rural landscape forming an essential part of nativity arising from the regionalism in question. This paper explores the relationship between the social and spatial aspects of Ireland as seen in Heaney’s writing space. It is interpreted through Edward Soja’s concept of Thirdspace that encompasses the socio-spatial and the spatial-temporal.
When Edward Soja speaks of Thirdspace, he speaks of a trialectics of space that covers our sociality, spatiality and physicality. It is often perceived as a fusion of the mental space as well as the physical space, the expanse of which governs the essentiality of individuals and communities alike. This shapes the collective identity when seen through one’s understanding of nativity that defines itself as an attachment to a place. But what is this Thirdspace?