الفهرس 
The Irish and Postmodern Concepts of HistoryOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 298 |  |  |
| | | from | 298 | | |
Abstract
The traditional-Irish historical vision is oriented towards conceiving the past as an
extra-temporal sanctuary in which the Irish nationhood has constantly manifested itself despite
apparent defeat. Since history is not to be understood as a series of events occurring as time
passes, but as a permanently existing reality, a sense of historical repetition is inevitable.
Events are seen as expressing perennial aspects of a condition which involves moral absolutes
primordially determined and unaffected by the passage of time.
However, the postmodern conception of history rejects any sense of continuity or common
experience. History can no longer be seen as a true account of things past or a neutral
representation of reality. Postmodernism acknowledges the undecidable in both the past and
what is known about the past, thus keeping history open to the endless deferral of repeated
narrative reconstruction. Postmodern historicity conceives the subject as shaken out of its secure
present and exposed to the shock of a temporality which is always self-divided. History is
transformed into an embodiment of the constructed time of a past that has never been present
and thus exists only as a repetition.
This thesis will challenge the standard critical opinions about the concept of history as expressed
in Seamus Heaney’s early poetry with special reference to North; It juxtaposes two contrastive
conceptions of history to reveal the dual nature of the self-divided and self-rebuking poet.