@article{oai:nagoya.repo.nii.ac.jp:00028001,
 author = {Ozawa, Shigeru},
 journal = {IVY},
 month = {Oct},
 note = {Irish poet Seamus Heaney fills his poems with lush descriptions of Irish scenery, labourers, and historical remnants drawn from the earth itself. These remnants, including the corpses of the deceased, are presented as symbolical hieroglyphs, waiting to be analyzed by the poem's narrator. Heaney clearly feels that even seemingly innocuous objects possess a hidden code that can reveal significance far greater than may lie visible on the surface. In his fourth anthology, North, the hieroglyphs were "bog bodies," which mean bodies dug out of peat bog in Denmark and Germany. These bodies were popularized by the archaeologist P. V. Glob, who conducted extensive research on their history and significance. For him, bog bodies symbolized the violence that has been prevalent since the Iron Age. Hieroglyphs are closely associated with metaphors, a tool frequently employed by Heaney. Most of his poems, in fact, contain a great many metaphors that connect abstract images with concrete objects. Metaphors give tangible objects more complex meanings while allowing them to retain their physical significance. In other words, metaphors can be viewed as a kind of hieroglyphs. This essay deals with two bog poems that rely heavily on metaphors to reveal a deeper meaning. Both "Punishment" and "Grauballe Man" are included in Heaney's anthology North, and both poems utilize a variety of metaphors. "Punishment" tells the story of the "Windeby Girl," a young woman whose body was dug out of a bog in Germany. This poem is based on Glob's assumption that she was executed because she committed adultery. In this poem, the narrator refers to both the ancient German society, when Windeby Girl was living, and Northern Ireland in 20^th century, when the narrator lives. In "Punishment," through the use of metaphors, the narrator makes clear the problems of society, which must depend on violent rituals of evicting scapegoats to keep order. He further points out that such rituals of eviction have been practiced since the Iron Age. Through a wide range of metaphors, Heaney supports his argument that behind the execution, the scapegoat mechanism functions to carry the sins of the community away from the society as a whole. Another of Heaney's bog poems, "Grauballe Man," describes the corpse of a body dug out of a peat bog in 1952. All of the metaphors in "Grauballe Man" center on the core image of the unity of art and nature. The developed form of this image is the unity of beauty and atrocity. This image includes not only the Grauballe Man, but also the victims in Northern Ireland. This structure gives the poem coherence, and leaves the reader contemplating the serious themes of art and nature. Metaphors play a significant role in both "Punishment" and "Grauballe Man." Although the metaphors in these poems may seem inconsistent, close analysis of the metaphors as hieroglyphs reveal how Heaney "uncodes" bog bodies. In both "Punishment" and "The Grauballe Man," the narrator does not show the clear conclusion. Both poems have "open" endings because they ask the reader to develop a personal interpretation of the hieroglyphs contained within them, considering the essential problems of humanity.},
 pages = {1--25},
 title = {The Bog Body as the Hieroglyph : Seamus Heaney's "Bog Poems"},
 volume = {37},
 year = {2004}
}