Table Of ContentNew Casebooks
SEAMUS HEANEY
New Casebooks
PUBLISHED FORTHCOMING
Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus
Hamlet Feminism and Shakespeare
King Lear Julius Caesar
Macbeth The Merchant of Venice
A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing and
Shakespeare's History Plays: The Taming of the Shrew
Richard II to Henry V Othello
Twelfth Night Shakespeare's Problem Plays
Shakespeare's Tragedies
Feminist Theatre and Theory
Waiting for Godot and The Duchess of Malfi and
Endgame The White Devil
Christopher Marlowe
Joseph Conrad
David Copperfield and Hard Bleak House
Times Wilkie Collins
Emma Jane Eyre
E. M. Forster Jude the Obscure
Frankenstein Mansfield Park and Persuasion
Great Expectations Toni Morrison
Middlemarch Ulysses
Mrs Dalloway and
To the Lighthouse John Donne
Sense and Sensibility and Philip Larkin
Pride and Prejudice Paradise Lost
Sons and Lovers Metaphysical Poetry
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Tristram Shandy
Villette
Wuthering Heights
William Blake
Chaucer
Coleridge, Keats and Shelley
Seamus Heaney
Victorian Women Poets
Wordsworth
Postcolonial Literatures
New Casebooks
SEAMUS HEANEY
EDITED BY MICHAEL ALLEN
St. Martin's Press
New York
ISBN 978-1-349-10684-4 ISBN 978-1-349-10682-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-10682-0
SEAMUS HEANEY
Introduction, selection and editorial matter copyright © 1997 by Michael
Allen
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997 978-0-333-48684-9
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information, address:
St. Martin's Press, Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1997
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and
made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.
ISBN 978-0-312-16502-4 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-312-16503-1 (paperback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Seamus Heaney I edited by Michael Allen.
p. em.-(New casebooks)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-16502-4 ISBN 978-0-312-16503-1 (pbk.)
I. Heaney, Seamus-Criticism and interpetation. 2. Northern
Ireland-In literature. I. Allen, Michael. II. Series.
PR6058.E2Z874 1997
821'.914-dc20 96-27424
CIP
Contents
Acknowledgments
Vll
General Editors' Preface
X
Introduction: MICHAEL ALLEN 1
1. Growing Up: Review of Death of a Naturalist 21
CHRISTOPHER RICKS
20 A Slow North-east Wind: Review of North 25
CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN
3o 'Inner Emigre' or 'Artful Voyeur'? Seamus
Heaney's North 30
EDNA LONGLEY
4o Seamus Heaney: The Timorous and the Bold 64
SEAMUS DEANE
50 Representation in Modern Irish Poetry 78
EAMONN HUGHES
6o The Mouth, the Meal and the Book: Review
of Field Work 95
CHRISTOPHER RICKS
70 Review of Field Work 102
TERRY EAGLETON
80 Writing a Bare Wire: Station Island 107
NEIL CORCORAN
9 The Government of the Tongue 129
0
SEAMUS HEANEY
v
VI CONTENTS
10. The Sign of the Cross: Review of The Government
of the Tongue 147
THOMAS DOCHERTY
11. 'Pap for the Dispossessed': Seamus Heaney and
the Poetics of Identity 155
DAVID LLOYD
12. 'Bog Queens': The Representation of Women in the
Poetry of John Montague and Seamus Heaney 185
PATRICIA COUGHLAN
13. Ana-; or Postmodernism, Landscape,
Seamus Heaney 206
THOMAS DOCHERTY
14. The Distance Between: Seamus Heaney 223
STAN SMITH
15. Paradigms of Possibility: Seamus Heaney 252
RICHARD KIRKLAND
Further Reading 266
Notes on Contributors 271
Index 274
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to a considerable number of people for their help in
the preparation of this New Casebook: in particular, Maureen
Alden, Jim Arnott, Rand Brandes, Michael Durkan, Seamus
Heaney, Ivan Herbison, Eamonn Hughes, Richard Kirkland,
Christopher Ricks and Michael Smallman. Special thanks are due to
Kate Arnott for expertly typing from a fairly illegible script. The
Queen's University of Belfast Publications Fund gave welcome
financial assistance.
I have, with the authors' agreement, shortened two essays repub
lished here, those by Terry Eagleton and Patricia Coughlan, in
order to exclude material not directly relevant to Heaney's poetry.
The editors and publishers wish to thank the following for permis
sion to use copyright material:
Neil Corcoran for material from Seamus Heaney (1986), by per
mission of Faber and Faber Ltd; Patricia Coughlan for material
from "'Bog Queens": The Representation of Women in the Poetry
of John Montague and Seamus Heaney' in Gender in Irish Writing,
ed. T. O'Brien Johnson and D. Cairns (1991), by permission of
Open University Press; Seamus Deane for 'Seamus Heaney: The
Timorous and the Bold' in Celtic Revivals (1985), by permission of
Faber and Faber Ltd; Thomas Docherty for 'The Sign of the Cross:
Review of The Government of the Tongue', Irish Review, 5,
Autumn (1988), 112-16, by permission of the author; and 'Ana-; or
Postmodernism, Landscape, Seamus Heaney' in Postmodernism: A
Reader, ed. T. Docherty (1992), by permission of Harvester
Wheatsheaf and Columbia University Press; Terry Eagleton forma
terial from 'Recent Poetry: Review of Field Work', Stand Magazine,
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
21:3 (1980) 77-8, by permission of the author; Seamus Heaney for
'The Government of the Tongue' in The Government of the Tongue
(1988). Copyright © 1989 by Seamus Heaney, by permission of
Faber and Faber Ltd and Farrar Straus & Giroux, Inc.; Eamonn
Hughes for material from 'Representation in Modern Irish Poetry'
in Aspects of Irish Studies, ed. M. Hill and S. Barber (1990),
Institute of Irish Studies, by permission of the author; Richard
Kirkland for 'Paradigms of Possibility: Seamus Heaney', in Writing
and Culture in Northern Ireland Since 1968, Studies in Twentieth
Century Literature Series (1994) Longman, by permission of
Addison-Wesley Longman Ltd; David Lloyd for "'Pap for the
Dispossessed"; Seamus Heaney and the Poetics of Identity' in
Anomalous States: Irish Writing and the Post-Colonial Moment
(1993), by permission of The Lilliput Press; Edna Longley for mate
rial from "'Inner Emigre" or "Artful Voyeur"? Seamus Heaney's
North in Poetry in the Wars (1986), by permission of Bloodaxe
Books; Conor Cruise O'Brien for 'A Slow North-east Wind: Review
of North', The Listener, 25 September 1975, by permission of the
author; Christopher Ricks for 'Growing Up: Review of Death of a
Naturalist', New Statesman, 27 May 1966, by permission of New
Statesman; and 'The Mouth, the Meal and the Book: Review of
Field Work', London Review of Books, 1:2, 8 November 1979, by
permission of London Review of Books; Stan Smith for 'The
Distance Between: Seamus Heaney' in The Chosen Ground: Essays
on the Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland, ed. Neil
Corcoran (1992), Seren Books, by permission of the author.
For copyright material included in the above essays:
Faber and Faber Ltd and Farrar Straus & Giroux, Inc. for extracts
from Seamus Heaney's poetry; selections from Field Work.
Copyright © 1976, 1979 by Seamus Heaney, The Haw Lantern.
Copyright © 1987, by Seamus Heaney, Poems 1965-1975.
Copyright© 1980 by Seamus Heaney, Seeing Things. Copyright©
1991 by Seamus Heaney, Selected Poems 1966-1987. Copyright©
1990 by Seamus Heaney, Station Island. Copyright © 1975 by
Seamus Heaney; and Elizabeth Bishop, 'At the Fishhouses' from The
Complete Poems 1927-1979. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice
Helen Methfessel; Penguin Books Ltd for Zbigniew Herbert, 'A
Knocker' in Selected Poems, trans. Czeslaw Milosz and Pater Dale
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
Scott (1968) Penguin Books. Copyright© Czeslaw Milosz and Peter
Dale Scott 1968.
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders but if any
have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to
make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.
