Reading Corporeality in the Climate Change Era: A Comparative Study of Seamus Heaney's and Hua Hai's Ecological Poetry

• Main Author: Xie, Chao
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: animal suffering; affect; material agency; embodied experience; qi
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss38/14; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/1917/viewcontent/KK_2038_2C_202022_2014_20Forum_20Kritika_20on_20Theorizing_20Corporeality_20in_20the_20Climate_20Change_20Era_20__20Xie.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Few critics have paid serious attention to the corporeality depicted in the Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney’s climate change poetry, despite the fact that the body has become an increasingly crucial topic in the climate change era. In a situation similar to Heaney’s, the Chinese ecopoet Hua Hai has stressed the mutual transformations between different forms of bodies in his works, but there have been few studies on Hua’s ideas of the body. These ideas are closely related to Confucianism and Daoism in particular. This article, referencing corporeal theories in the West and the East, is a comparative reading of Heaney’s and Hua’s ecological poetry against the backdrop of climate change. By representing various bodies, be they human or nonhuman, as interconnected and interdependent in different poetic ways, both poets provide fresh insights into the idea of corporeality, which is important to address in relation to the ongoing climate crises.