Resonances of Celtic Pantheism in Claire Keegan’s Walk the Blue Fields

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59045/nalans.2024.60

Keywords:

Nature, Pantheism, Celtic Pantheism, Religion, Claire Keegan, Walk the Blue Fields

Abstract

The relationship between nature and religion has been a matter of philosophical and religious debate for centuries. Nature has been evaluated as a means of reaching God and is considered a reflection of creative power. Pantheism occurs as represented in particular narratives, exploring nature-human coexistence as a manifestation of God. This study aims to explore the elements of Celtic pantheism as a depiction of Christian perception of life, focusing on its attempt to find a reflection of God in nature. Drawing on the terminologies offered by Spinoza, the study analyses Keegan’s story Walk the Blue Fields within a conceptual framework of pantheism, associated with a long spiritual tradition that locates divinity within the natural world, challenging traditional Church doctrines and fostering a mutual relationship between nature and culture. The paper examines how the characters disappoint traditional conceptions by seeking God not within institutional organisations but in nature and the natural. Such an attitude revives the sensitivities of Celtic pantheism by blending natural elements with divine reflections and spiriting the material world with fancy and imagination. The paper also discusses how these stories offer new ethical considerations as to what is good or bad: naturalness. The study shows how the characters’ ‘natural life’ and ‘life in nature’ yield a genuine moral expression and perception through unmediated natural experience. The study concludes that envisaging nature as a potential realm of spiritual connection and reflective involvement brings creative power and healing cure.

Author Biography

References

Cerf, B. (1922). Wordsworth’s gospel of nature. PMLA, 37(4), 615 -638. https://doi.org/10.2307/458427

Giri, H. (2022). Celtic pantheism in Coelho’s Brida. Patan Prospective Journal, 2(1), 61–67.

Gladwin, D. (2019). Ecological and social awareness in place-based stories. The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 42, 138–157.

Jantzen, G. M. (1997). Feminism and pantheism. The Monist, 80(2), 266-285. https://doi.org/10.2307/27903015

Keegan, C. (2007). Walk the blue fields. In Walk the blue fields (pp. 15–39). Faber and Faber.

Luppino, C. (2014). The old and the new in Claire Keegan’s short fiction. Journal of the Short Story in English, 63, 1–15.

Moran, D. (1990). Pantheism from John Scottus Eriugena to Nicholas of Cusa. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 64(1), 131– 151. https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq19906414

Newell, J. P. (1997). Listening for the heartbeat of God: A Celtic spirituality. Paulist Press.

Newell, J. P. (2011). A new harmony: The spirit, the earth, and the human soul. Jossey-Bass.

Piper, H. W. (2013). The active universe: Pantheism and the concept of imagination in the English Romantic poets. Bloomsbury.

Smith, E. (2019). Autonomy, naturalism, and folklore in Claire Keegan’s Walk the Blue Fields. The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 42, 192–208.

Spinoza, B. de. (2018). Ethics: Proved in geometrical order. Cambridge University Press.

Sullivan, R. E. (1982). John Toland and the deist controversy: A study in adaptations. Harvard University Press.

Yeats, W. B. (1902). The Celtic twilight. A. H. Bullen.

Downloads

Published

2024-12-30

How to Cite

Resonances of Celtic Pantheism in Claire Keegan’s Walk the Blue Fields. (2024). Journal of Narrative and Language Studies, 12(26), 298-311. https://doi.org/10.59045/nalans.2024.60