http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/keyword/irish-literature Inquiries Journal provides undergraduate and graduate students around the world a platform for the wide dissemination of academic work over a range of core disciplines. en-us Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:41:27 -0400 Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:41:27 -0400 http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1826/resurrecting-the-bog-queen-exploring-the-gender-politics-of-irelands-bogs-in-postcolonial-and-nationalist-literature By Rosie Ryan - Bogs are one of Ireland’s most notable and mysterious landscapes. As explored in the work of Seamus Heaney, the bog’s capacity to preserve memory across generations makes it a melancholic terrain that is uniquely suited to explorations of Ireland’s national identity, particularly as Ireland emerged out of the grip of British colonialism. This paper draws upon postcolonial, feminist, and literary theory to explore why the bog has become such a provocative terrain for the exploration of Irish identity and Irish femininity. Beginning with the writings of colonial administrators,... Mon, 26 Oct 2020 10:41 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1826/resurrecting-the-bog-queen-exploring-the-gender-politics-of-irelands-bogs-in-postcolonial-and-nationalist-literature http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1744/learning-to-love-the-absolute-other-in-the-poetry-of-seamus-heaney-and-michael-longley By Madeleine A. Gallo - Innocent lamb, savage tiger, free-flying eagle – time after time animals interrupt poetry as the ideal, the muse, the hero, or the grotesque operating alongside humanity. In tracking animal imagery throughout contemporary Irish poetry, we may run the risk of imposing a perhaps unfair anthropocentric epistemology onto these poets. Although at times poets like Seamus Heaney or Michael Longley endeavor to convert animals into something more humanlike, or something that exists merely at the mercy of mankind, what lies beneath this original uneasiness is anguish over the fact that they as men... Tue, 30 Oct 2018 09:11 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1744/learning-to-love-the-absolute-other-in-the-poetry-of-seamus-heaney-and-michael-longley http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1733/the-poetics-of-witnessing-in-the-works-of-seamus-heaney By Dipsikha Thakur - In his poem ‘Punishment’ from the poetry collection North (1975), Seamus Heaney picks up the voice of a witness who is suspended between the possibilities of love, silence, voyeurism, outrage and above all, the understanding of the process of violence that brings the ‘numbered bones’ of the corpse it describes to its present state. While it would no doubt be too obvious a strategy to read Heaney’s personal voice in that of the speaker of this poem, there are nonetheless resonances in this state of paralysis between mutually irreconcilable positions that brings to... Thu, 22 Mar 2018 04:25 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1733/the-poetics-of-witnessing-in-the-works-of-seamus-heaney http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1524/examining-eveline-a-study-in-the-origins-of-the-paralysed-subject-in-joyces-dubliners By Ramy Habib - When James Joyce rewrote “The Sisters,” intending it to serve as an introduction to the whole of Dubliners, he altered the first line of the story with much significance: “There was no hope for him this time” (19)[1]. As it stands, the series not only begins with a clear statement about the lack of hope but also with an allusion to the inscription on the gates of Hell in Dante’s Inferno: “All hope abandon ye who enter here” (III.9). It is this with attitude, expecting only despair, that we should “enter here” when reading any of the stories... Tue, 31 Jan 2017 10:30 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1524/examining-eveline-a-study-in-the-origins-of-the-paralysed-subject-in-joyces-dubliners