The Post-Pastoral Elements in Michael Longley’s Poetics

Abstract

When discussing the internal contradictions and issues of ideology and representation posed by the literary pastoral, Lawrence Buell suggests the need for “a more mature environmental aesthetics” than the pastoral provides (32). Terry Gifford insists that “‘A mature environmental aesthetics’ would need to recognise that some literature has gone beyond the closed circuit of pastoral and anti-pastoral to achieve a vision of an integrated natural world that includes the human” (148). The Irish poet Michael Longley has increasingly avoided pastoral’s anthropocentric worldview that the universe centres on humans; he reassigns preference to the concerns of the biosphere, including its human participants. He seamlessly integrates social systems and ecosystems, proposing what Donna Potts terms a “more radical reordering of cultural values” (79). This article analyses the ecocritical value of Longley’s poetry in light of Terry Gifford’s suggested requisites for post-pastoral literature.

Keywords

• Michael Longley
• Terry Gifford
• Post-Pastoral Poetry
• Ecopoetry
• Ecocentrism
• Ecocriticism