The Cambridge Companion to Seamus HeaneyBernard O'Donoghue Seamus Heaney is a unique phenomenon in contemporary literature, as a poet whose individual volumes (such as his Beowulf translation, and individual volumes of poems such as Electric Light and District and Circle) have been high in the bestseller lists for decades. Since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, he has come to be considered one of the most important English language poets in the world. This Companion gives an up-to-date overview of his career thus far, and of his reception in Ireland, England and around the world. Its distinguished contributors offer detailed readings of all his major publications, in poetry, prose and translation. The essays further explore the central themes of his poetry, his relations with other writers, and his prose writing. Designed for students, this volume will also have much to interest and inform the general reader and admirer of Heaney's unique poetic voice. |
Contents
From Advancements of Learning | 19 |
The Context of Heaneys Reception | 37 |
Heaney in Public | 56 |
Heaney and the Feminine | 73 |
Heaney and Eastern Europe | 92 |
Heaneys Classics and the Bucolic | 106 |
Heaney as Critic | 122 |
ANDREW MURPHY | 136 |
IO Irish Influence and Confluence in Heaneys Poetry | 150 |
Heaney and Yeats | 165 |
I2 Heaneys Wordsworth and the Poetics of Displacement | 178 |
Heaney Beowulf and the Medieval Literature of the North | 192 |
Heaney after 50 | 206 |
Guide to Further Reading 22 4 | 224 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic artistic Belfast Beowulf Bernard O’Donoghue British Catholic classical contemporary context cultural Dante Dante’s death Derry District and Circle Dublin early Eclogue edited Electric Light English essay example Faber and Faber Farrar father feminine Field Day figure gender Glanmore goddess Gunnarr Haw Lantern Heaney’s Heaney’s poem Heaney’s poetry imagination influence interview Irish poetry John Joyce Kavanagh Kinsella language literary literature London Longley lyric MacNeice Mandelstam masculine Michael Michael Longley Milosz Montague Naturalist Neil Corcoran North Northern Ireland O’Donoghue one’s Oxford pastoral Patrick Kavanagh Paul Muldoon poem’s poet poet’s poetic political prose published Queen’s readers Redress of Poetry Review Seamus Deane Seamus Heaney sense sequence Spirit Level Station Island Straus and Giroux Ted Hughes theme Things Tollund tradition translation Ulster University Press Vendler verse violence Virgil voice volume W. B. Yeats words Wordsworth writing Yeats’s Yeatsian