Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on six subfields, namely environment and religion; postmodern nature; technology and landscape; postcolonial ecocriticism; ecosemiotics; and globalisation and sense of place. By reading Ted Hughes's and Seamus Heaney's poems from the variety of thematic and methodological perspectives, the book aims to analyse their work in ways that place their poems in dialogue with disciplines from outside the immediate field of literary and poetry studies, relating to the broader framework of environmental humanities. To allow this kind of conversation and mutual input between poetry analysis and other environmental humanities disciplines, the main focus in the book is on content, meaning the prevailing themes and ideas, rather than the formal qualities of Heaney's and Hughes's poetics. Both Hughes and Heaney have expressed explicit concerns for the natural environment, in poetry as well as in prose.