Seamus Heaney: Creating Irelands of the Mind.
Author: O’BRIEN, Eugene.
Dublin: Liffey Press, 2002. 190 pages. Paperback.
This study of all of Seamus Heaney’s work to date — poetry, prose and translations — traces his development from an acceptance of the givens of Irish society, in terms of politics, culture, nationalism and religion, to a more complicated and ongoing critique of these givens. It also parallels this process of development with that of Irish society in general, which has travelled a broadly similar path. It is the intersection of his writing with this societal development that makes Heaney such a central figure for any study of contemporary Ireland.
Heaney’s work develops the process of moving from an inward-looking preoccupation with history, the past and racial memory, to an outward-looking mindset directed on the present and future. The recurring themes of digging in memory, the power of language, the interplay between art and politics, and between the individual and the tribe, are examined in detail.
Probably the most popular poet writing in English today, Heaney won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995.
This revised and updated edition now includes analysis of Heaney’s work since 2001, including the play The Burial at Thebes: Sophocles’ Antigone.
ISBN: 1904148026
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