‘Friendship's Garland’ and the Manuscripts of Seamus Heaney's ‘Fosterage’

Author: Allison Jonathan

Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Volume 35, Number 1, 1 January 2005 , pp. 58-71(14)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

The manuscript drafts of Seamus Heaney's ‘Fosterage’, written in the early 1970s and held at Woodruff Library, Emory University, reveal a complicated process of revision involving twelve separate drafts of the poem. During this process, Heaney includes and later excises multiple references to the contemporary ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, focusing finally on his friendship with Michael McLaverty (to whom the poem is dedicated) and on the theme of artistic style, which is the final poem's dominant concern. Particular references in the drafts link this poem to other early poems such as ‘The Tollund Man’ and ‘The Betrothal of Cavehill’.

Keywords: Manuscript drafts; Seamus Heaney; Fosterage; revision; Troubles; Northern Ireland; Michael McLaverty; artistic style; The Tollund Man; The Betrothal of Cavehill

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: University of Kentucky

Publication date: 2005-01-01

More about this publication?

A supplement to the Modern Language Review, this journal includes articles and reviews on the language and literature of the English-speaking world. Most of the volumes published so far are 'Special Numbers', collections of between fifteen and eighteen commissioned articles on particular topics, such as the impact of the French Revolution on English writers; literature in the modern media; and colonial and imperial themes in literature.