Seamus Heaney’s “Intimate Revolt” in North

Abstract

North, Seamus Heaney’s fourth volume of poetry, deals with the nature of the subject in a problematic society, as it is the scene of conflict between the subject and the forces, laws and traditions of society. The volume is mainly concerned with an artist’s suffering in a society where the rejection of subjugation to the norms seems impossible. Despite being in an agonizing dilemma, the speaker challenges the norms of collective identity by sticking to the intimacy of his self. The action is achieved through retrospection and revelation of the decisive moments of the construction of subjectivity in several poems. The speaker’s return to the past is an ”intimate revolt” which results in confrontation and ultimately the rejection of submission to ideology, a poetic strategy that paves the way for the construction of a free and independent subject.