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Abstract

One of my favorite passages regarding the idea of the sense of place occurs in one of the poet
Seamus Heaney's discussions of Wordsworth. Referring to the Westmoreland landscape that
figures in Wordsworth's poem 'Michael', Heaney writes that the landscape is both
'humanised and humanising'. The landscape, or more generally, the place, is thus seen as itself
having a human character, while it also makes human those who live within it. The mutuality
between place and human being that is suggested here has been a fundamental theme in much
of my own work, and, if we take it that such mutuality is a real feature of the relation between
places and persons, it goes a long way to explaining why it is that place, and the sense of place,
takes on so much importance in human life and experience - an importance attested to by
the essays in this volume.

Item Type:	Book Section
Authors/Creators:	Malpas, J
Publisher:	Australian National Musem Press
Additional Information:	© 2008 the National Museum of Australia Press and the Author
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