| Abstract: | Moya Cannon is an Irish poet who has granted special relevance to nature in her books. She has published seven collections of poetry: Oar (1990), The Parchment Boat (1997), Winter Birds (2005), Carrying the Songs (2007), Hands (2011), Keats Lives (2015) and Donegal Tarantella (2019).
The aim of the present essay is to study the relation between nature and identity in Cannon’s poetry. Her work represents an environment charged with historical and cultural reminiscences of the Irish past, but also menaced by the present-day transformations entailed by globalization. By combining postcolonial and ecocritical theories, this TFG will explore the impact that the idealization of the environment may have upon human and non-human oppressed groups. This TFG will introduce some relevant ideas regarding the connection between ecocriticism and postcolonialism and will offer an analysis of the poetry of Cannon concerning the relation between nature and identity.
Regarding the methodology, books such as Ken Hiltner’s Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader (2015), Terry Gifford’s Green voices: Understanding Contemporary Nature Poetry (1999) and John Parham’s The Environmental Tradition in English Literature (2002) will be fundamental to establish a connection between environment and identity. Furthermore, sources such as The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry (2003) edited by Matthew Campbell and Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Pastoral Tradition (2011) by Donna L. Potts will provide the literary criticism necessary to understand the literary context in which Cannon has produced her |
