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‘ Bog Queens’: The Representation of Women in the Poetry of John Montague and Seamus Heaney

‘ Bog Queens’: The Representation of Women in the Poetry of John Montague and Seamus Heaney. By Patricia Coughlan, in Theorizing Ireland , ed. Clare Connolly. pgs. 41-60 NY: Palgrove, 2003. ‘Bog Queens’. Painstakingly discussed, reviewed, summarized, & satirized by Christopher C. Douglas.

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‘ Bog Queens’: The Representation of Women in the Poetry of John Montague and Seamus Heaney

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  1. ‘Bog Queens’: The Representation of Women in the Poetry of John Montague and Seamus Heaney By Patricia Coughlan, in Theorizing Ireland, ed. Clare Connolly. pgs. 41-60 NY: Palgrove, 2003

  2. ‘Bog Queens’ • Painstakingly discussed, reviewed, summarized, & satirized by Christopher C. Douglas. • For Dr. Moloney’s Irish Literature Course, 2005.

  3. Favorite Word/Phrase • Spade-phallus • Phallically • Phallic surrogates

  4. Two Types of Female-Figures • Beloved or Spouse Figure vs. The Mother • Which can, in turn be: • “Benign and fertile” or • “Awe-inspiring and Terrible” • Women are, however, defined by ‘the home.’

  5. Heaney’s Two Types of Women • The Passive Woman who is brought pleasure and is explored by a Dominate Male. • “Rite of Spring,” “Bog Queen,” “Ocean’s Love to Ireland,” & others. • A Woman who “dooms, destroys, puzzles and encompasses the man, but also assists him to self-discovery.” The Mother merged with the Spouse. • “The Tollund Man” & “The Grauballe Man”

  6. On “Digging” • "Digging foreshadows later, explicitly sexual, bog poems, with its all too relevant succession of phallic surrogates -- pen, 'snug as a gun,' spade -- and its sensuously rich material which waits passively to be 'dug'.” • This is a case of ‘gender roles’ where Heaney is aligning himself with his forefathers and their phallocentric professions. • (I got that word from Lit. Crit. with Dr. Conley)

  7. My thoughts on “Digging” • Clearly, brimming with Sexuality.

  8. Gender in Celtic Culture • Gender is a “metaphysical concept,” two opposing forces – male/female, much like black/white, north/south. • This is different from the World of Today, where gender is tied up on a more individual level, apparently.

  9. Sex! Passive sex! • The poems “Rite of Spring” and “Undine” both deal with sexual desires, women, and water. • The woman/water is ‘tamed’ by ‘farming skill.’ It’s sort of a ‘women are like nature, men are like civilization’ sort of thing.

  10. On “Midnight” • Language is “erotically enabling.” • “In "Midnight," the eradication of wolves in Ireland is made the sign of both of the seventeenth-century conquest and of emasculation. The poem ends: Nothing is panting, lolling, Vapouring. The tongue's Leashed in my throat. making a symptomatic equation of phallus, speech, predation, and national strength almost too obvious to mention.”

  11. My thoughts on “Midnight” • Clearly, very erotically enabling / brimming with sexuality.

  12. The Second Type of Woman • “In Heaney, for example, the nature-goddess is simultaneously spouse, death-bringer and nurturer.”

  13. On “The Tollund Man” • She tightened her torc on himAnd opened her fen,Those dark juices workingHim to a saint’s kept body. • “Female energy” is both “inert and devouring.” The woman is “a channel for masculine fear and desire.” • The land is feminine, and associated with death. It, like women, is oppressed.

  14. The Bog & “Ocean’s Love” • In “Ocean’s Love to Ireland,” the English takeover is seen as a sort of ‘rape’ or seduction of the land. • The death-land goddess claiming helpless victims (female force) is countered with the English colonization ‘rape’ (masculine force) in different poems.

  15. The Author’s Final Thoughts • “So, must we not conclude that the poetry of Montague and Heaney as a whole is insistently and damagingly gendered?” • The poetry reinforces gender stereotypes, and refuses to acknowledge “an autonomous subjectivity in others: a structure common to sexism and racism.”

  16. My Final Thoughts • “So, must we not conclude that the poetry of Montague and Heaney as a whole is insistently and damagingly gendered?” • I answer “No” to your rhetorical question. • The author seemed predisposed to seeing penises in everything, especially shovels. I don’t think that a poem about digging potatoes has anything to do with sex. One of us is wrong. I think I know who I agree with. • Maybe people would enjoy poetry more if they didn’t go looking for hidden agendas. I wonder if Patricia Coughlan enjoyed the poems.

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