Co-existence of eco-feminism and patriarchism in W. B. Yeats's and Seamus Heaney's poems

서지정보

ㆍ발행기관 : 한국예이츠학회 ㆍ수록지정보 : The Yeats Journal of Korea / 26권
ㆍ저자명 : Hong, Sung Sook

영어 초록

'Eco-feminism' as a combination of two words, 'ecology' and 'feminism', rests on the basic principle that patriarchical philosophies are harmful to women, children, and other living things. Eco-feminists feel that the patriarchical philosophy emphasizes the need to dominate and control unruly females and the unruly wilderness. What is stressed in eco-feminism is to change the still prevailing idea that the male-dominated civilization must be justified: eco-feminists think that human beings came to recognize that such civilization can't be the source of happiness. Meanwhile we can find that in Yeats's and Heaney's poems land and landscape are personified as an oppressed woman, from which I drew a hypothesis that these two poets may offer the prominent examples of literature based upon eco-feminism. By contrast, we can also find that these two poets also reveal patriarchism based upon Catholicism. Therefore, if anything, we can suppose that many works of these poets are reflecting both eco-feminism and patriarchism. The Irish poems and poets cannot but reflect these two ideas: eco-feminism and patriarchism. Meanwhile, in Irish poetry, woman is mainly reflected as three types of human-sovereign, procreator and lover. In Yeats's and Heaney's poems, woman and nature are to be appraised as important materials. Women in Yeats's poems are faithful to the traditional image as the lover or rarely the sovereign. And also, we can find that the persona wants to use her as his poetic inspiration by admiring her beauty and seeking sexual energy and wisdom from her. By contrast, women in Heaney's poems are mainly described as procreators who are to survive the oppressed land. The two poets are to be appraised to reflect eco-feminism in that they both show their love for woman and nature. Strictly speaking, however, Heaney's poems are more declined to eco-feminism while Yeats's poems are more declined to patriarchism: in Heaney's poems land and landscape sometimes appear as the oppressed woman; in Yeats's poems the persona blames woman for her violence, emphasizing that woman should have courtesy, wisdom and sexual attraction, not the intellectual hatred, whereas in Heaney's poems the persona never blames woman but feels pity for her oppressed situation.

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