Seamus Heaney: Criticism


Critical Studies
Monographs General studies
Collections Annual listings

[ There is an Guardian obituary by Neil Corcoran - online. ]

See a fine biographical and critical account, with primary and secondary bibliography at The Poetry Foundation’s “Seamus Heaney” page - online [accessed 18.03.2014].

Monographs
[Full-length studies]
  • R[obert] Buttel, Seamus Heaney [Irish Writers Series] (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1975), 88pp.
  • Edward Broadbridge, ed., Seamus Heaney (Kobenhavn: Skoleradioeu 1977), 64pp.
  • Elmer Andrews, The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: All the Realms of Whisper (London: Macmillan 1988), vii, 219pp.
  • Ronald Tamplin, Seamus Heaney (Milton Keynes: Open University Press 1989), xiii, 114pp.
  • Thomas C. Foster, Seamus Heaney [Twayne’s English Authors Ser. 468] (Boston: Twayne [1989]), xii, 156pp., and Do. (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1990) [var 1989].
  • Catherine Byron, Out of Step: Pursuing Seamus Heaney to Purgatory (Bristol: Loxwood Stoneleigh 1992), 260pp. [ill. by drawings by the Sidney Sidney, The Poetry of Resistance: Seamus Heaney and the Pastoral Tradition (Ohio UP 1990), xvii, 165pp.
  • Henry Hart, Seamus Heaney: Poet of Contrary Progressions (Syracuse UP 1992), xii, 219pp.
  • [also 1991, 1993].
  • Michael Parker, Seamus Heaney: The Making of A Poet (Gill & Macmillan; Iowa UP 1993), 294pp.
  • Bernard O’Donoghue, Seamus Heaney and the Language of Poetry (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1994), xii, 173pp.[see contents].
  • Arthur E. McGuinness, Seamus Heaney: Poet and Critic [Irish Studies, 3] (NY: Peter Lang 1994), xi, 199pp.
  • Michael R. Molino, Questioning Tradition, Language, and Myth: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press 1994), xi, 215pp.
  • J. W. Foster, The Achievement of Seamus Heaney (Dublin: Lilliput 1996), 64pp. [compilation of earlier essays]
  • Helen Vendler, Seamus Heaney (Harvard UP 1998), 191pp., and Do. [pb.] (2000) [available at Google Books - online].
  • Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Crediting Marvels in Seamus Heaney's Seeing Things [Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis] (Uppsala Universite 1999), 219pp.
  • Maria Cristina Fumagalli, The Flight of the Vernacular: Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and the Impress of Dante [Cross cultures ser.; readings in the post-colonial literatures in English, 49] (Amsterdam: Rodopi 2001), xxvi, 303 pp.
  • Warren Hope, Greenwich Exchange student guide to Seamus Heaney (London: Greenwich Exchange 2002), viii, 60pp.
  • Jerzy Jarniewicz, The Bottomless Centre: The Uses of History in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney (Rozprawa habilitacyjna ser.] (LoŽdz: Wydaw: Uniwersytetu LoŽdzkiego 2002), 185pp.
  • Eugene O’Brien, Seamus Heaney and the Place of Writing (Gainesville: Florida UP 2002), x, 191pp.
  • Eugene O’Brien, Seamus Heaney: Creating Irelands of the Mind [Contemporary Irish Writers and Filmmakers] (Dublin: Liffey Press 2003), xvi, 190pp.
  • Eugene O’Brien, Seamus Heaney: Searches for Answers (London: Pluto Press 2003), ix, 213pp. [see contents].
  • Floyd Collins, Seamus Heaney: The Crisis of Identity (Newark: Delaware UP; London: Associated University Presses 2003), 246pp. [see contents].
  • A. B. Crowder, & J. Hall, eds., Seamus Heaney: Poet, Critic, Translator (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2007) [incls. Seamus Heaney and the Modern Irish Elegy’, in pp.9-25].
  • Karen Marguerite Moloney, Seamus Heaney and the Emblems of Hope (Columbia: Missouri UP 2007), xix, 212pp., ill. [see contents].
  • Joy Rosemary Atfield, Jungian Reading of Selected Poems of Seamus Heaney, with a preface by James S. Baumlin (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press 2007), v, 151pp. [Poets and Poetry; Initiation; Individuation; Collective Unconscious; Mother Archetype; Father Archetype; Spirit; Transcendent Function].
  • Conor McCarthy, Seamus Heaney and Medieval Poetry (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer 2008), viii, 195pp. [treats of Sweeney Astray, Station Island, Beowulf, and The Testament of Cresseid; partially available at Google Books - online].
  • Dennis O’Driscoll, Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney (London: Faber 2009), 558pp. [virtually an autobiography; see contents under Works, supra].
  • Daniel Tobin, Passage To The Center: Imagination And The Sacred In The Poetry Of Seamus Heaney (Kentucky UP 2009), 288pp. [see contents & extract].
  • Andrew Murphy, Seamus Heaney [Writers & Their Work Series/British Council] (Plymouth: Northcote House Publ. 1996), xiii, 105pp.; and Do. [2nd rev. edn.] (2000), xiv, 143 pp.; and Do. [3rd edn.] (British Council 2010), xiv, 144pp.
  • Guy Rotella, Castings: Monuments and Monumentality in Poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, James Merrill, Derek Walcott, and Seamus Heaney (Nashville: Vanderbilt UP 2004), ix, 225pp. [incls. chap. treating of “The Grauballe Man”, “In memoriam Francis Ledwidge”, and other poems].
  • Meg Tyler, A Singing Contest: Conventions of Sound in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney [Studies in Major Literary Authors ser.] (London: Routledge 2005), xiv, 214pp.
  • John F. Desmond, Gravity and grace: Seamus Heaney and the Force of Light [Studies in Christianity & literature] (Waco, TX.: Baylor UP 2009), 127pp.
  • Magdalena Kay, In Gratitude for All the Gifts: Seamus Heaney and Eastern Europe (Toronto UP 2012), 240pp. [treats of  Heaney with Czeslaw Milosz and Zbigniew Herbert; see extract].
  • [...]
  • John Dennison, Seamus Heaney and the Adequacy of Poetry [Oxford Academic] (Oxford: OUP 2015), 256pp.[see content].
  • R. F. Foster, On Seamus Heaney (NJ: Princeton 2020), 228pp [see LRB review by Seamus Perry in Commentary - infra.]
  • Joanne Piavanini, Cultural Memory in Seamus Heaney’s Late Work (Palgrave Macmillan 2020), pp.225 [see contents].
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[taken with others]
  • David Annwn, Inhabited Voices: Myth and History in the Poetry of Geoffrey Hill, Seamus Heaney, and George Mackay Brown (Frome, Somerset: Bran’s Head Books 1984), xiv, 243pp.
  • Christine Finn, Past Poetic Archaeology in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney (London: Duckworth 2004), 214pp.
  • Peggy O’Brien, Writing Lough Derg: From William Carleton to Seamus Heaney [Irish studies ser.] (Syracuse UP 2006), xxiii, 312pp.
  • Terence Dewsnap, Island of Daemons: The Lough Derg Pilgrimage and the poets Patrick Kavanagh, Denis Devlin, and Seamus Heaney (Delaware UP 2008), 221pp., ill.
  • David-Antoine Williams, Defending Poetry: Art and Ethics in Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, and Geoffrey Hill [Oxford English monographs] (Oxford: OUP 2010), xi, 240pp. [contents].
  • Sarah Broome & Vivian Valvano Lynch, Myth, History and Fiction in Works by Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane [Working Papers in Irish Studies] (Ft. Lauderdale: Liberal Arts Dept., Nova Southeastern University 2000), 27pp.
  • Richard Rankin Russell, Poetry & Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland (Notre Dame UP 2010), xiv, 389pp.[see contents].
  • Stephanie Schwerter, Northern Irish Poetry and the Russian Turn : Intertextuality in the Work of Seamus Heaney, Tom Paulin and Medbh McGuckian (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2013), x, 251pp.

See also John Evans, Strong Enough to Help: Spirituality in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney [Farmington Papers, 7; Modern theology] (Oxford: Farmington Institute for Christian Studies 1997), [7]p.; Bob Jacob, The Day Seamus Heaney Kissed My Cheek in Dublin: Poems, 1986-1999 [Outstanding Author Ser., 6; The spirit that moved us, 13] (NY: Spirit That Moves Us Press 2000), 48pp.

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Student guides
  • Blake Morrison, Seamus Heaney [Contemporary Writers] (London: Methuen 1982), 95pp. [see extract].
  • Nicholas McGuinn, Seamus Heaney: A Guide to the Selected Poems 1965-1975 (Leeds: Arnold-Wheaton 1986).
  • Neil Corcoran, A Student’s Guide to Seamus Heaney [Faber Student Guides] (London: Faber & Faber; NY: Chealsea House 1986), 192pp., and Do. [reb. & enl.] as The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: A Critical Study (London:Faber & Faber 1998), xi, 276pp.
  • Aisling Maguire, Seamus Heaney: Selected Poems [York Notes] (Harlow: Longman 1986, 1988), 78pp.
  • Shay Daly, Seamus Heaney: Selected Poems [York Notes] (Harlow: Longman 1998), 80pp. [incls. test questions’].
  • Shaun McCarthy with Tony Buzan, A Guide to Selected Poems of Seamus Heaney [[Teach yourself literature guides] (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1999), x, 85pp., ill. [map].
  • Alasdair [D. F.] Macrae, Selected Poems from Opened Ground [York Notes Advanced] (London: York 2000), 112pp.

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Essay Collections
  • Tony Curtis, ed., The Art of Seamus Heaney (Bridgend: Seren Books/Poetry Wales Press Ltd. 1982, rev. edn., Seren; ), 180pp., and Do., 3rd rev. edn. Bridgend: Seren; Dublin: Wolfhound 1985; Chester Springs: Dufour 1994), 239pp. [see contents], and Do. [4th edn.] (Seren 2001), 295pp.
  • Harold Bloom, ed. & intro., Seamus Heaney [Modern Critical Views] (NY: Chelsea House 1986), viii, 199pp., and Do. rep. as Seamus Heaney: Comprehensive Research and Study Guide [Bloom’s Major Poets] (Philadelphia: Chelsea House 2003), 111pp. [see contents].
  • Jacqueline Genet, ed., Studies on Seamus Heaney (Caen Univ.: Centre de Publications 1987), [incl. essays by Claude Fiérobe; Adolphe Haberer; Maurice Harmon; Caroline MacDonagh; Patrick Rafroidi; Colin Meir; Jean Brihault and Genet; chiefly in English].
  • Elmer Andrews, ed., Seamus Heaney: A Collection of Critical Essays (London Macmillan 1992), 273pp. [see contents].
  • Colby Quarterly [Special Issue on Heaney] (March 1994) [incls. The Erotics of Seamus Heaney’s Joyce’, pp.25-32].Robert Garrett Robert Garratt, ed., Critical Essays Essays on Seamus Heaney (NY: G. K. Hall; Prentice Hall Internat. 1995), ix, 223pp.
  • Jacqueline Genet & Elisabeth Hellegouarc’h, eds., Seamus Heaney et la création poétique [Caen: Groupe de recherches anglo-irlandaises] (Université de Caen 1995), 119pp.
  • Catherine Malloy & Phyllis Carey, eds., Seamus Heaney: The Shaping Spirit (Delaware UP; London: AUP 1996), 199pp. [see contents].
  • Michael Allen, ed., Seamus Heaney [New Casebooks] (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press 1997), x, 279pp. [see contents].
  • Geraldine Higgins, Seamus Heaney in Context (Cambridge UP 2021), xiv, 370pp. [see contents]
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Bibliography & Reference
  • Rand Brandes & Michael J. Durkan, Seamus Heaney: A Reference Guide (NY: G. K. Hall; Prentice Hall Internat. 1996), xvii, 225pp.
  • Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, Seamus Heaney: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism [Icon Critical Guides] Cambridge 1998), and Do. [reiss.] (Palgrave 1998, 2000, 2003), 192pp. [see contents].
  • Toshiaki Okamura, ed., A Complete Concordance to the Poetical Works of Seamus Heaney (Tottori: Tottori University [Dept. of Language & Culture] 2004), xvi, 1322pp. [small circulation; copy in TCD].
  • Rand Brandes & Michael J. Durkan, Seamus Heaney: A Bibliography 1959-2003 (London: Faber & Faber 2008), xxxiii, 494pp. [incls. Discography, pp.437-448].
  • Bernard O’Donoghue, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney (Cambridge UP 2009), xviii, 239pp. [see contents].
Note: Michael J. Durkan, d. 1996.
General studies
  • Terence Brown, Northern Voices: Poets from Ulster (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1975) [as infra].
  • J. W. Foster, Colonial Consequences (Dublin: Lilliput Press 1991) [incls. earlier and later essays on Heaney].
  • Les Murray, The Paperbark Tree: Selected Prose (Manchester: Carcanet 1993) [contains commissioned essay on Heaney’s The Haw Lantern].
  • Jahan Ramazani, Poetry of Mourning, The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney (Chicago UP 1994).
  • Christine Finn, Past Poetic Archaeology in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney (London: Duckworth 2004), 214pp.
  • Shane Alcobia-Murphy, Sympathetic Ink: Intertextual Relations in Northern Irish Poetry (Liverpool UP 2006), 284pp. [on Heaney, Muldoon & McGuckian].
  • Timothy O’Leary, Foucault and Fiction: The Experience Book (London: Continuum 2009), 192pp. [incls. analysis of Heaney].

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Annual listing (articles & chapters)
 
    1970-1979
  • James Randall, ‘An Interview with Seamus Heaney’, in Plough Shares, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1970), pp.[?]-22.
  • John Wilson Foster [q. title] in The Critical Quarterly (Spring 1974), pp.36-47.
  • Terence Brown, Four New Voices, Poets of the Present’, in Northern Voices: Poets from Ulster (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1975), pp.171-213.
  • D. E. S. Maxwell, ‘Contemporary Poetry in Northern Ireland’, in Two Decades of Irish Writing, ed. Douglas Dunn (Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire: Carcanet 1975), pp.166-85 [espec. pp.171-74].
  • John Wilson Foster, ‘Seamus Heaney’s A Lough Neagh Sequence’: Sources and Motifs’, Éire-Ireland (Summer 1977), pp.138-42.
  • Benedict Kiely, ‘A Raid into Dark Corners: The Poems of Seamus Heaney’, in The Hollins Critic (October 1970), rep. in A Raid into Dark Corners and Other Essays (Cork UP 1999), pp.45-54 [therein dated err. as 1978].
  • Arthur E. McGuinness, ‘“Hoarder of the Common Ground”: Tradition and Ritual in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry’, in Éire-Ireland, 13, 2 (Summer 1978), pp.71-92.
  • Mark Patrick Hederman, ‘Seamus Heaney: the Reluctant Poetry’, Crane Bag, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1979), pp.61-70

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    1980-1989
  • Alan Warner, ‘Seamus Heaney’ [chap.], in A Guide to Anglo-Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1981), pp.261-68.
  • Timothy Kearney, ‘“Befitting Emblems of Adversity”, Seamus Heaney, the Poet and the Troubles’, in Threshold, No. 32 (Winter 1982) [q.pp.].
  • Jon Stallworthy, ‘The Poet as Archaeologist: W. B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney’, in The Review of English Studies [Oxford: OUP], 33, 130 (May 1982), pp.158-74.
  • Stephen Regan, ‘The Poetry and Prose of Seamus Heaney’, in University of Toronto Quarterly 5, 51(Spring 1982), pp.306-13.
  • Dillon Johnston, ‘Kavanagh and Heaney’ [chap.], in Irish Poetry After Joyce (Notre Dame UP 1985), pp.121-66.
  • Julian Gitzen, ‘Northern Ireland, The Post-Heaney Generation’, in Poesis, 6, 2 (1985), pp.47-64.
  • Elmer Andrews, ‘The Gift and the Craft: An Approach to the Poetry of Seamus Heaney’, in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 31 (1985) [q.pp.].
  • Seamus Deane, ‘Seamus Heaney: the Timorous and the Bold’, in Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature 1880-1980 (London: Faber &amp Faber 1985), pp.174-86[88].
  • David Lloyd, ‘“Pap for the Dispossessed”: Seamus Heaney and the Poetics of Identity’, in Boundary, 2 (Winter/Spring 1985), pp.319-42 [rep. in Anomalous States: Irish Writing in the Post-Colonial Moment, Duke UP 1993, pp.13-40].
  • Robert Garrett, ‘The Poetry of Commitment: Seamus Heaney’, in Modern Irish Poetry: Tradition and Continuity from Yeats to Heaney (California UP 1986), pp.230-58.
  • H. A. Kelly, ‘Heaney’s Sweeney: The Poet as Version-Maker’, in Philological Quarterly, 65, 3 (Summer 1986), pp.293-310.
  • Edna Longley, ‘“Inner Émigré”, or “Artful Voyeur?”, Seamus Heaney’s North’, in Poetry in the Wars (Bloodaxe Books 1986), pp.140-69.
  • Michael Durkan, ‘Seamus Heaney: A Checklist for a Bibliography, in Irish University Review (1986) [q.pp.].
  • W. J. McCormack, ‘Seamus Heaney’s Preoccupations’, in The Battle of the Books: Two Decades of Irish Cultural Debate (Dublin: Lilliput 1986), pp.31-39.
  • Edna Longley, ‘Putting on the International Style’, in The Irish Review, 5 (Autumn 1988), pp.75-81.
  • Eileen Cahill, ‘A Silent Voice: Seamus Heaney and Ulster Politics’, Critical Quarterly, 29, 3 (Autumn 1987), pp.55-59.
  • Joseph Swann, ‘The Poet as Critic: Seamus Heaney’s Reading of Wordsworth, Hopkins and Yeats’, in Wolfgang Zach and Heinz Kosok eds., Literary Interrelations: Ireland, England and the World, Vol. II: Comparison and Impact (Tübingen: Guntar Narr Verlag, 1987), pp. 361-72.
  • Darcy O’Brien, ‘Piety and Modernism, Seamus Heaney’s Station Island’, in James Joyce Quarterly, 26, 1 (1988), pp.51-65.
  • Rand Brandes, interview with Seamus Heaney, in Salmagundi, 80 (1988) [cp.17].
  • Maureen Waters, ‘Heaney, Carleton and Joyce on the Road to Lough Derg’, in The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 14, 1 (July 1988), pp.55-65.
  • Henry Hart, ‘Ghostly Colloquies, Seamus Heaney’s “Station Island”’, in Irish University Review, 18, 2 (1988), pp.233-50.
  • David Cairns & Shaun Richards, ‘What Ish my Nation?, in Writing Ireland (Manchester UP 1988), pp.142-48 [commentary on Heaney’s ‘poetic excavation’].
  • Seamus Heaney: Fiftieth Birthday Issue’, Agenda (Spring 1989) [poems and a lecture, with essays on Heaney incl. Neil Corcoran, Heaney’s Joyce, Eliot’s Yeats’, pp.37-47; Carolyn Meyer, Orthodoxy, Independence and Influence in Seamus Heaney’s Station Island, pp.48-61, et al.].
  • Henry Hart, ‘Poetymologies in Seamus Heaney’s Wintering Out’, in Twentieth Century Literature, 35, 2 (Summer 1989), pp.204-31.
  • Seán Lysaght, ‘Heaney vs. Praeger, Contrasting Natures’ in The Irish Review, 7 (Autumn 1989), pp.68-74.
  • Augustus J. Fry, ‘Confronting Seamus Heaney, A Personal Reading of his Early Poetry’, in C. C. Barfoot & Theo D’haen, eds., The Clash of Ireland: Literary Contrasts and Connections (Amsterdam: Rodopi 1989), pp.234-38.
  • Geert Lernout, ‘‘The Dantean Paradigm: Thomas Kinsella and Seamus Heaney’, in C. C. Barfoot and Theo D’haen, eds., The Clash of Ireland [ … &c. ] (1989), pp.248-64.

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    1990-1999
  • Thomas B. O’Grady, ‘At a Potato Digging’: Seamus Heaney’s Great Hunger’, in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 16, 1 (July 1990), pp.48-58.
  • Susan Shaw Sailer, ‘Time against Time: Myth in the Poetry of Yeats and Heaney’, in The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 17, 2 (Dec. 1991), pp.54-63.
  • Stan Smith, ‘Seamus Heaney: The Distance Between’, in The Chosen Ground: Essays on the Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland, ed. Neil Corcoran (Brigend, Mid Glamorgan: Seren Books; Dufour 1992), pp.35-61.
  • Shelley C. Reece, ‘Seamus Heaney’s Search for the True North’, in Pacific Coast Philology [Pacific Ancient & Modern Language Assoc.], 27, 1/2 (Sept. 1992), pp.93-101.
  • Richard Brown, ‘Bog Poems and Book Poems: Doubleness, Self-Transition and Pun in Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon’, in The Chosen Ground: Essays on the Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland, ed. Neil Corcoran, ed., (1992), pp.153-67.
  • Liam F. Heaney, ‘Heaney’s “Otter of Memory”’, in The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies , 19, 2, (Dec. 1993), pp.13-19.
  • Desmond Fennell, Whatever You Say, Say Nothing: Why Seamus Heaney is No. 1 (Dublin: ELO Publications 1991), 43pp., and Do. [2nd augmented edn.](ELO 1991), 44pp.
  • Eamon Halpin, ‘Seamus Heaney and the Politics of Imagination’, in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 20, 2 (Dec. 1994), pp.20-28.
  • Fiona Stafford, ‘“All gone into the world of light?”: Anglings and Aimings in Seamus Heaney’s Seeing Things’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 1, 1 (Spring 1994), pp.63-74.
  • Séamus MacGabhann, ‘The Redemptive Vision: Seamus Heaney’s Sweeney Astray , in Brian Cosgrove, ed., Literature and the Supernatural [Essays for the Maynooth Bicentenary] (Dublin: Columba Press 1995), pp.132-45.
  • Michael Allen, ‘The Parish and the Dream: Heaney and America, 1969-1987’, in Southern Review, 31, 3, (1995) [cp.727, 732]
  • See Lothar Fietz & Hans-Werner Ludwig, Poetry in the British Isles: Non-Metropolitan Perspectives (Cardiff: Wales UP 1995) [q.pp.].
  • Peter McDonald, ‘Seamus Heaney as Critic’, in Michael Kenneally, ed., Poetry in Contemporary Irish Literature [Studies in Contemporary Irish Literature 2] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1995), pp.174-89.
  • Gertrude Patterson, ‘“Unless soul clap its hands and sing”: Literature, Cultural Heritage and a Divided Society’, in Irish Studies Review (Spring 1996), pp.26-29.
  • D. Eagles, Seamus Heaney: Life of an Irish Poet (NY: Franklin Watts 1997).
  • Liam de Paor, ‘The Archaeology of a Poem: Heaney’s Seeing Things’, in The Recorder, 9, 1 (Spring 1996) [q.pp]; rep. in Landscapes with Figures (Dublin: Four Courts 1998), pp.210-16].
  • Hans Osterwalder, An Equable Achievement: Seamus Heaney’s The Spirit Level’, in Irish Studies Review, 20 (Autumn 1997), p.30-35.
  • John Adames, The Sonnet Mirror: Reflections and Revaluations in Seamus Heaney’s “Clearances”’, in Irish University Review (Spring-Summer 1997), pp.276-86.
  • Philip Hobsbaum, The Belfast Group: A Recollection’, in Éire-Ireland 32, 2&3 (Summer/Autumn 1997), pp.173-82.
  • Rand Brandes, Seamus Heaney’, in Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook, ed. Alexander Gonzalez (Conn: Greenwood Press 1997), pp.103-10.
  • Scott Brewster, A Residual Poetry: Heaney, Mahon and Hedgehog History’, in Irish University Review, 28, 1 (Spring/Summer 1998), pp.56-66.
  • Maurice Harmon, Seamus Heaney: Digger of the Middle Ground’, in The Harp, 13 (Japan 1998), pp.1-13.
  • Jonathan Allison, Seamus Heaney and the Romantic Image’, in Sewanee Review, 106, 2 (Spring 1998), pp.184-01.
  • Richard Wall, A Dialect Glossary for Seamus Heaney’s Works’, in Irish University Review, 28, 1 (Spring/Summer 1998), pp.68-87.
  • Michael Böss, Roots in the Bog: Notion of Identity in the Poetry and Essays of Seamus Heaney’, in Karl-Heinz Westarp & Michael Böss, eds., Ireland: Towards new Identities? (Aarhus UP 1998), pp.134-45.
  • Michael Cavanagh, ‘Fighting off Larkin: Seamus Heaney and “Aubade”’, in The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 24:2 (Dec. 1998), pp.63-75 [see extract].
  • Tom Herron, Spectaculars: Seamus Heaney and the Limits of Mimicry’, in The Irish Review (August 1999), pp.183-91.
  • Brian McHale, Archaeologies of Knowledge: Hill’s Middens, Heaney’s Bogs, Schwerner’s Tablets’, in New Literary History, 30, 1 (Winter 1999), pp.239-62.
  • Raphaël Ingelbien, Mapping the Misreadings: Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, and Nationhood’, in Contemporary Literature, 40, 4 [Wisconsin UP] (Winter 1999), pp.627-58.
  • Eugene O’Brien, ‘Seamus Heaney’s Prose: Preoccupying Questions’, in ed., Writing Ulster, 6 [Northern Narratives’, ed. Bill Lazenblatt] (1999), pp.50-62 [var. 49-67].
  • Medbh McGuckian, Horsepower Pass By!: A Study of the Car in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney (Coleraine, NI: Cranagh Press 1999), 38pp. [pamphlet].
  • Tim Hancock, ‘Seamus Heaney: Poet of Tension or Poet of Conviction?’, in Irish University Review, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Autumn-Winter 1999), pp.358-75.
    2000-
  • Fran Brearton & Eamonn Hughes, eds., Last Before America - Irish and American Writing: Essays in Honour of Michael Allen (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 2001), incls. Peter McDonald, Faiths and Fidelities: Heaney and Longley in Mid-Career’ [ pp.3-15]; Patricia Horton, ‘“A Truly Uninvited Shade”: Romantic Legacies in the Work of Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon’ [pp.16-28], and Adrienne Janus, Mnemosyne and the Mislaid Pen: The Poetics of Memory in Heaney, Longley and McGuckian’ [pp.54-68], et al.
  • Terry Eagleton, Unionism and Utopia: Seamus, Heaney’s The Cure at Troy’, in Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish Theatre, ed. Eamonn Jordan (Blackrock: Carysfort Press 2000), pp.172-76 [see extract].
  • Rui Carvalho Homem, An Interview with Seamus Heaney’, in The European English Messenger, X, 2 (Autumn 2001), pp.24-30.
  • Mitsuko Ohno, Hokusai, Basho, Zen and More: Japanese Influences on Irish Poets’, in Journal of Irish Studies (IASIL-Japan), XVII (2002), pp.15-31; pp.20-21 [questionnaire-response with Irish poets; see note, infra].
  • John Brown, In the Chair: Interview with Poets from the North of Ireland (Galway: Salmon Press 2002) [incls. interview with Heaney].
  • Dillon Johnston, Violence in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry’, in The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry, ed. Matthew Campbell (Cambridge UP 2003), pp.113-32.
  • Eugene O’Brien  ‘The Ethics of Translation: Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy’, in The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies,
  • 27, 2 & 28, 1 (2003) pp.7-37.
  • Helen [Hennessy] Vendler, Seamus Heaney and the Grounds of Hope (SF: Arion Press 2004), 20pp. [lecture at the Arion Press, 31 March 2004; edn. of 400 copies for subscribers and friends ... June 2004].
  • Noel Russell, Interview with Seamus Heaney, BBC Ulster (17 April 2006) [many detail son of family life in childhood detail].
  • Adam Kirsch, [article based on studentship under Heaney in 1990s] in Harvard Review (Nov. 2006), q.pp.
  • Patricia Coughlan, “The Whole Strange Growth”: Heaney, Orpheus and Women’, in The Irish Review, 35, 1 (Spring 2007) pp.25-45.
  • Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon: Omphalos and Diaspora’, in Writing Home: Poetry and Place in Northern Ireland, 1968-2008 (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer 2008), pp.83-117.
  • Joanna Cowper, “The places I go back to”: Familiarisation and Making Strange in Seamus Heaney’s Later Poetry’, in Irish Literature Since 1990: Diverse Voices, ed. Scott Brewster & Michael Parker (Manchester UP 2009) [Chap. 7; q.pp.]
  • Eugene O’Brien, ‘“Any Catholics among you...?”: Seamus Heaney and the Real of Catholicism’ in Breaking the Mould: Literary Representations of Irish Catholicism and Ireland, Reimagining Ireland: Contemporary Irish Studies Series, ed. Eamon Maher & O’Brien (Oxford: Peter Lang 2011), pp.171-90.
  • Aidan O’Malley, Field Day and the Translation of Irish Identities: Performing Contradictions (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2011) - on Heaney: The Cure at Troy (pp.120-31).
  • [...]
  • Angela Leighton, ‘Heaney and the Music’, in The Irish Review, 49/50 (Winter-Spring 2014-15), pp.19-32 [available at JSTOR - online; accessed 14.01.2023].
  • Andrew Motion, ‘Door into the Dark opened the portals to a different future’, in The Observer (17 Aug. 2014) [as attached].
  • Magdalena Kay, ‘Descent into Darkness’, review of Aeneid Book VI, trans Seamus Heaney, Faber, 53pp, in DRB (Jan. 2017) [see extract].

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Selected reviews
  • John Carey, ‘Lost and Found’, in New Statesman (31 Dec. 1965), pp.1033.
  • John Carey, ‘Brave New Worlds’, review of Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level (Faber 1996), in Sunday Times, Books (28 April 1996), pp.1-2 [see also reviews by Carey on Haw Lantern and Finders Keepers in this newspaper].
  • Christopher Ricks, ‘Growing Up’, in New Statesman, 71 (27 May 1966), p.778.
  • Marsh [i.e., Ian Hamilton], ‘Props for a Proposition’, in Observer (19 June 1966), pp.12.
  • C. B. Cox, ‘The Painter’s Eye’, in Spectator, 216, 7195 (20 May 1966), p.638.
  • Patricia Beer, Seamus Heaney’s Third Book of Poems’, in Listener, 88, 2280 (7 Dec. 1972), p.795
  • Peter Porter, ‘Poets’ places’, in Guardian (30 November 1972), pp.12.
  • Stephen Spender, Can Poetry be Reviewed?’, in New York Review of Books, 10, 14 (20 Sept. 1973), p.8.
  • Douglas Dunn, ‘Moral Dandies’, in Encounter, 40 (March 1973), pp.70.
  • Ciaran Carson, ‘Escaped from the Massacre?’ Honest Ulsterman, 50 (Winter 1975), pp.183-186 [var. 184-85].
  • Anthony Thwaite, ‘Neighbourly Murders’, in The Times Literary Supplement, 382 (1 Aug. 1975), pp.866.
  • Terry Eagleton, ‘Recent Poetry’, review of Seamus Heaney, Field Work, in Stand, 231 (1980), pp.76-79.
  • Derwent May, ‘Peace in Ireland?’, in Listener (22 November 1979), pp.720-21.
  • Declan Kiberd, ‘Breech birth of a naturalist’, in Sunday Tribune (28 October 1984), pp.20.
  • Elizabeth Jennings, ‘The Spell-Binder’, in Spectator, 253, 8159 (24 November 1984), pp.30-31.
  • Henry Hart, ‘Seamus Heaney’s Poetry of Meditation: Door into the Dark’, in Twenty-Century Literature, Vol. 31 (1985).
  • Richard Ellmann, ‘Heaney Agonistes’, in New York Review of Books (4 March 1985) [q.p.].
  • John Carey, ‘The Stain of Words’, review of Seamus Heaney, The Haw Lantern, and Paul Muldoon, Meeting the British, in Sunday Times (21 June 1987), p.56 [... &c.].
  • Henry Hart, ‘Poetymologies in Seamus Heaney’s Wintering Out’, in Twenty-Century Literature, Vol. 35 (1989).
  • Bernard O’Donoghue, ‘Weight to the Lighter Scale’, Poetry Review, Vol. 79 (Winter 1989-90).
  • Elmer Andrews, review of Seeing Things, in Linen Hall Review (Winter 1991), pp.27-29.
  • Seamus Deane, ‘The Politics of the Poetics’, Sunday Tribune (8 Oct. 1995).
  • John Bayley, ‘Professing Poetry’ review of Helen Vendler, The Given and the Made: Recent American Poet.[q. source].
  • [q.auth.,] Soul Says: On Recent Poetry; and The Redress of Poetry’, in Times Literary Supplement (20 Oct. 1995), pp.9-10.
  • Gerald Dawe, ‘Praising the Poet’, Fortnight 344 (Nov. 1995), q.p.
  • Robert McLiam Wilson, ‘The Glittering Prize’, in Fortnight Magazine (Nov. 1995).
  • Daniel Johnson, ‘Heaney: The Irishman Without Frontiers’, in The Times (6 Oct. 1995).
  • Peter Levi, ‘Lover of the upside-down, Peter Levi admires astute account of poetry from Seamus Heaney’, review of The Redress of Poetry, in Sunday Times (10 Oct. 1995) [Books’, p.11].
  • Declan Kiberd, ‘Heaney’s Local Pieties with Universal Appeal’, in Sunday Tribune (8 Oct. 1995); .
  • Declan Kiberd, review of Heaney, trans., Laments by Jan Kochanowski, with other works, in Tribune Magazine (3 Dec. 1995).
  • Medbh McGuckian, review of Redress of Poetry, in Fortnight Review, 344 (Nov. 1995), p.36.
  • Maurice Harmon, ‘To Be Most the Poet’, review of The Redress of Poetry, in Books Ireland (Nov. 1995), pp.281-82.
  • Michael Smith, review of Laments, in Irish Times (9 Dec. 1995), Weekend, p.8.
  • Michael Parker review of Laments, trans. by Heaney with Stanislaw Baranczak (1995) in Times Literary Supplement (22 March 1996), p.26.
  • Nicholas Jenkins, ‘Travels and Release in Seamus Heaney’, in The Times Literary Supplement (5 July 1996).
  • Peter McDonald, ‘The Poet and the Finished Man: Heaney’s Oxford Lectures’, in The The Irish Review, No. 19 (Spring/Summer 1996).
  • John Carey, ‘Brave New Worlds’, review of Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level, in Sunday Times (28 April 1996), [Books], pp.1-2.
  • Fintan O’Toole, ‘Lines from the Frontier’, in Daily Telegraph (4 May 1996).
  • P. J. Kavanagh, ‘The dove keeps on rising’, review of The Spirit Level, in The Spectator (11 May 1996), p.43.
  • Richard Tillinghast, review of The Spirit Level, in New York Times Review of Books (21 July 1996), p.6 [accomp. by full-page port.].
  • Niholas Jenkins, ‘Walking on Air’, long review of Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level, in Times Literary Supplement ( 25 July 1996), pp.10-12.
  • Richard Tillinghast, review, New York Times Review of Books (21 July 1996), p.6 [featured with full-page port. on cover].
  • [...]

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Media

Interviews
  • Seamus Deane, interview with Seamus Heaney, in The Crane Bag, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1977), pp.61-72 [rep. in The Crane Bag: Book of Irish Studies (1982); same pag.].
  • Frank Kinahan, ‘An Interview with Seamus Heaney’, in Critical Inquiry, 8, 3 (1982), pp.410-11.
  • John Haffenden, Meeting Seamus Heaney [a conversation], in London Magazine [London: Faber] (June 1979), pp.1-28; with “The Strand at Lough Beg: In Memory of Colum McCartney”, by Heaney; xerox copy held in Liverpool UL; see also typescript of an interview with Seamus Heaney by John Haffenden, and an annotated copy of “Station Island”].
  • John Haffenden, ed., Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation (London: Faber & Faber 1981) [incl. Heaney, Kinsella, Muldoon, Richard Murphy, Paulin, et. al.], pp.57-75.
  • Fintan O’Toole, Beyond the Niceties’, in Sunday Tribune, Vol. 8, No. 15 (10 April 1988).
  • Tom Adair, Calling the Tune’, in Linenhall Review, 6 2 (Autumn 1989) [cp.7].
  • John Breslin, “Seeing Things”: John Breslin interviews Seamus Heaney’, in The Critic, 46 (Winter 1991).
  • George Greig, At the Height of his Powers’, in The Sunday Times (8 Oct. 1998).
  • Mark Lawson, Turning Time Up and Over’, in The Guardian (30 April 1996).
  • [Karl Miller,] Seamus Heaney: A Conversation with Karl Miller (London: Between the Lines 2000), 112pp.
  • Nigel Farndale, ‘Seamus Famous [sic]: Interview with Seamus Heaney’, in Sunday Telegraph (April 1, 2001), p. 20 [available online].
  • Declan Kiberd, intro., The Poets’ Chair: Readings and Interviews with Ireland’s Poets from the National Poetry Archive, Vol. 1, (Dublin: Poetry Ireland [2008]) [Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Rita Ann Higgins].
  • Dennis O’Driscoll, Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney (London: Faber 2009), 558pp. [virtually an autobiography].
  • Michael Cavanagh, Professing Poetry: Seamus Heaney’s Poetics (Washington: CUA Press 2009), xv, 254pp.
Journals: special Heaney issues
  • Agenda, 27, 1 (Spring 1989).
  • Colby Quarterly, 30, 1 (March 1994).
  • Salmagundi, 80 (Fall 1988).
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  • Heaney at Seventy (RTE 2009), online at www.rte.ie/heaneyat70/ incls. Peter Sirr, “In Step with What Escaped Me”: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney’ [pdf] - [last accessed 23.05.2011]
Discography
  • Seamus Heaney and Tom Paulin [A Faber Poetry Cassette] (London: Faber & Faber 1983), 1 audiocassette [60 min.; mono] + 1 booklet, 28pp.
  • Seamus Heaney at Harvard [gen. eds. Stratis Haviaras & Michael Milburn] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard College [1990]), 2 cassettes [1 hr., 52 min., 16 sec.] + leaflet [reading own poems and those of Dunbar, Wyatt, Raleigh, Shakespeare, Marvell, Blake, Wordsworth, Hardy and Yeats in Poetry Room Harvard UL].
  • Seamus Heaney Lecture [Oxford Chair of Poetry Lectures / Trinity Term 1991] (Oxford: Oxford University 1991), 1 cassette.
 
15-CD box set of the poet reading his Collected Poems
Introduction: Peter Sirr, ‘In Step With What Escaped Me’: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney’, pp.5-46 [see full-text copy in RICORSO Library, via index - or as attached.]
Content Listings 47     p

1. Death of a Naturalist
2. Door into the Dark
3. Wintering Out
4. North
5. Field Work
6. Station Island (Pt. 1)
7. Station Island (Pts. 2 & 3)
8. The Haw Lantern

48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
  9.   Seeing Things (Pt. 1)
10. Seeing Things (Pt. 2)
11. The Spirit Level (Pt. 1)
12. The Spirit Level (Pt. 2)
13. Electric Light (Pt. 1)
14. Electric Light (Pt. 2)
15. District and Circle
    Acknowledgements
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
65

 
Websites
Go to RICORSO “Gateway” [infra] for Heaney websites managed by Paul Jones and Joe Pelligrino (both of North Carolina University).

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Bibliographical details

Tony Curtis, ed., The Art of Seamus Heaney (Bridgend: Seren Books/Poetry Wales Press Ltd. 1982, rev. edn., 1985), 180pp., and Do ., 3rd rev. edn. Bridgend: Seren; Chester Springs: Dufour 1994), 239pp. CONTENTS: Introduction [7]; Roland Mathias, Death of a Naturalist’ [11]; Dick Davis, Door into the Dark’ [27]; Philip Hobsbaum, Craft and Technique in Wintering Out’ [35]; Anne Stevenson, Stations: Seamus Heane and the Sacred Sense of the Sensitive Self’ [45]; Edna Longley, The Manuscript Drafts of the poem “North”’ [53]; North: “Inner Emigré or “Artful Voyeur”?’ [63; also in Poetry in the Wars, 1986]; Curtis, “A More Social Voice”: Field Work’ [97]; Anne Stevenson, The Peace Within Understanding: Looking at Preoccupations’ [129]; Ciaran Carson, Sweeney Astray: Escaping from Limbo’ [139; prev. printed as review in Honest Ulsterman, No. 76]; Barbara Hardy, Meeting the Myth: Station Island’ [149].

Do., [Tony Curtis, ed., The Art of Seamus Heaney] with new essays in revised edn. (1994) - incls. Helen Vendler, Second Thoughts: The Haw Lantern’ [165]; Bernard O’Donoghue, Heaney’s Ars Poetic: The Government of the Tongue’ [179]; Patrick Crotty, All I Believed that Happened There was Revision’ - on Selected Poems and New Selected Poems [191]; Douglas Dunn, Quotidion [sic] Miracles: Seeing Things’ [205]; Bibliography; index of poems discussed; Notes on Contributors [See sundry extracts under Commentary, as attached].

Harold Bloom, ed., Seamus Heaney [Modern Critical Views] (NY: Chelsea House 1986), viii, 199pp., and Do. rep. as. Seamus Heaney: Comprehensive Research and Study Guide [Bloom’s Major Poets] (Philadelphia: Chelsea House 2003), 111pp. Series Contents: Editor’s notes and an introduction; Author’s biography; Thematic and structural analysis; Extracts and major critical essays; Extensive bibliography; Index of themes and ideas. Critics given in extract incl. P.R. King, Henry Hart, Rand Brandes, Edna Longley, Eamonn Hughes, Michael Molino, Lucy McDiarmiad, Arthur E. McGuinness, Michael Parker, Tony Curtis, Daniel Tobin,

Elmer Andrews, ed., Seamus Heaney: A Collection of Critical Essays (London Macmillan 1992, 1993), 273pp. CONTENTS: Andrew Waterman, “The best way out is always through”’; James Simmons, The Trouble with Seamus’; Maurice Harmon, “We Pine for Ceremony”: Ritual and Reality in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney’; David Lloyd, “Pap for the Dispossessed”: Seamus Heany and the Poetry of Identity’; John Lucas, Seamus Heaney and the Possibilities of Poetry’; Elmer Andrews, Beauty and Truth: The Nature of Heaney’s Lyricism’; Louis Simpson, Irish Ghosts: Station Island’; Robert Welsh, “A Rich Young Man Leaving Everything He Had”: Poetic Freedom in Seamus Heaney’; Terence Brown, The Witnessing Eye and the Speaking Tongue’; W. J. McCormack, Holy Sinners: Seamus Heaney, Translation and European Poetry’; Michael Allen, “Holding Course”: The Haw Lantern and its Place in Heaney’s Development’; Bibliopgraphy; Index. [Var. listing incls. Eilean Ní Chuilleanain, Richard Kearney, Edna Longley, Peter McDonald, Patricia Craig, John Wilson Foster, Gerald Dawe, A. S. Knowland & Barbara Buchanan.]

Bernard O’Donoghue, Seamus Heaney and the Language of Poetry (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1994), xii, 173pp. CONTENTS: Introduction: An art that knows its mind’ 1. English or Irish lyric? 2. 60s Heaney 3. Phonetics and feeling - from Wintering Out to Field Work; 4. 70s Heaney; 5. ‘The Limbo of Lost Words’ - the Sweeney complex; 6. Beyond the alphabet - The Haw Lantern and Seeing Things’ 7. Heaney’s Ars Poetica - Mandelstam, Dante and The Government of the Tongue; Conclusion. Notes [Bibl. & index].

Catherine Malloy & Phyllis Carey, eds., Seamus Heaney: The Shaping Spirit (Delaware UP; London: AUP 1996), 199pp. CONTENTS: Seamus Deane, Powers of earth and visions of air’; John R. Boly, Moments of misremembrance: a poem and its audiences’; Rand Brandes, ’“Inscribed in sheets’: Seamus Heaney’s scribal matrix’; Jonathan Allison, Seamus Heaney’s anti-transcendental corncrake’ [pp.71-81]; David Lloyd, Fusions in Heaney’s North’; Charles L. O’Neill, Violence and the sacred in Seamus Heaney’s North’; Sammye Crawford Greer, ’“Station Island” and the poet’s progress’; Michael Patrick Gillespie, Aesthetic and cultural memory in Joyce and Heaney’; Phyllis Carey, Heaney and Havel: parables of politics’; Catharine Malloy, Seamus Heaney’s Seeing things: “retracing the path back ...”’; Darcy O’Brien. [incls. Jonathan Allison, Seamus Heaney’s Corncrake’.

Michael Allen, ed., Seamus Heaney [New Casebooks] (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press 1997), x, 279pp. CONTENTS: Michael Allen, Introduction; Christopher Ricks, Growing Up: Review of Death of a Naturalist’; Conor Cruise O’Brien, A Slow North-East Wind: Review of North’; Edna Longley, “Inner Emigre” or “Artful Voyeur”? Seamus Heaney’s North’; Seamus Deane, Seamus Heaney: The Timorous and the Bold’; Eamonn Hughes, Representation in Modern Irish Poetry’; Christopher Ricks, The Mouth, the Meal and the Book: Review of Field Work’; Terry Eagleton, Review of Field Work’; Neil Corcoran, Writing a Bare Wire: Station Island’; Seamus Heaney, The Government of the Tongue’; Thomas Docherty, The Sign of the Cross: Review of The Government of the Tongue’; David Lloyd, “Pap for the Dispossessed”: Seamus Heaney and the Poetics of Identity’; Patricia Coughlan, “Bog Queens”: The Representation of Women in the Poetry of John Montague and Seamus Heaney’; Thomas Docherty, Anna -, or Postmodernism, Landscape: Seamus Heaney’; Stan Smith, The Distance Between: Seamus Heaney’; Richard Kirkland, Paradigms of Possibility: Seamus Heaney’; Further Reading; Notes on Contributors; Index.

Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, Seamus Heaney: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism [Icon Critical Guides] (Cambridge Icon 1998), and Do. [reiss.] (Basingstoke: Palgrave 1998, 2000, 2003), 192pp. [Introduction - Heaney and the Anglo-American Canon - Place, Identity, Language - Poetry and Politics - Gender, Colonialism, Nationalism - Powers of Earth and Visions of Air - Notes - Bibliography - Acknowledgements - Index]

Eugene O’Brien, Seamus Heaney: Searches for Answers (London: Pluto Press 2003), ix, 213pp. CONTENTS: Preoccupying questions: Heaney’s Prose; Continuous Adjudication: Binary Oppositions and the Field of Force; Writing in the Sand: Poetry and Transformation; Surviving Amphibiously: Poetry and Politics; A Bright Nowhere: the Deconstruction of Place; Through-otherness: The Deconstruction of Language; Nobel Causes: Heaney and Yeats; Bibliography (pp.198-205); Index.

Floyd Collins, Seamus Heaney: The Crisis Identity (Newark: Delaware UP; London: Associated University Presses 2003), 246pp. CONTENTS: 1. The Crisis of Identity and the Development of a Poetic Consciousness; 2. Heaney’s Response to the Troubles: History, Myth, and the Bog Poems. 3. Field Work and Station Island: A Door into the Light; 4. A Poetics of Transcendence; Epilogue: Beowulf and Electric Light; Bibliographical references (pp.23-39). [Available at Google Books - online.]

David-Antoine Williams, Defending Poetry: Art and Ethics in Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, and Geoffrey Hill /[Oxford English monographs] (Oxford: OUP 2010), xi, 240pp. CONTENTS: Ethics, literature, and the place of poetry; The case against; The ‘ethical turn’; Poetry and ethics; Defending poetry; T. S. Eliot and the modernist defence; A duty to language: the example of Eliot; Learning from Eliot - Joseph Brodsky: a ‘peremptory trust in words’. Placing Brodsky; The state v. Brodsky; The poet v. society; The poem and the person, face to face - Seamus Heaney: beyond the ‘dialect of the tribe’. Redresses; Soundings; Crossings; Connections; Translations - Geoffrey Hill: a ‘question of value’. The endurance of value; The value of endurance; Memorizing memorializing; Silence and suffering; Weight of the word. [Formerly as DPhil Oxon, “Poethics: twentieth-century apologia in T.S. Eliot, Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill” (2007).]

Karen Marguerite Moloney, Seamus Heaney and the Emblems of Hope (Columbia: Missouri UP 2007), xix, 212pp., ill. CONTENTS: Introduction: Sympathy into Symbol; 1. Sovereignty and the Irish Talent; 2. Millennia in their Eyes; 3. Heaney’s Love to Ireland; 4. The Fish and the Fisher King; 5. Bridegroom to the Goddess; 6. Remembering the Giver; Appendix to Chap 6: Bone dreams’ 7. Conclusion: Praying at the water’s edge. [Electronic copy (Palo Alto, Calif.: ebrary 2009.]

Richard Rankin Russell, Poetry ∓ Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland (Notre Dame UP 2010), xiv, 389pp. CONTENTS: Introduction: Northern Irish poetry, imagination, and ethics; 1. Laying the foundations: the Belfast Group and Michael Longley’s conciliatory cultural wo8 rk; 2. Lighting out for the unknown territory: Longley’s No continuing city; 3. Longley’s poetry of war and peace; 4. Fragility and ceremony: Longley’s pastorals, holocaust elegies and Asian miniatures; 5. ‘To make myself an echo chamber’: Seamus Heaney’s auditory imagination; 6. The road to Derry, Wintering out and North: Northern dialects, Northern violence; 7. Field work through The haw lantern: burrowing inward, looking outward; 8. Redressing reality: seeing things through district and circle; 9. Coda: poetry and the Northern Irish peace process.

Bernard O’Donoghue, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney (Cambridge UP 2009), xviii, 239pp. CONTENTS: O’Donoghue, Introduction; Rand Brandes, ‘Seamus Heaney’s Working Titles: from “Advancements of learning” to “Midnight Anvil”’; Patrick Crotty, ‘The Context of Heaney’s Reception’; Dennis O’Driscoll, ‘Heaney in Public’; Fran Brearton, ‘Heaney and the Feminine’; Justin Quinn, ‘Heaney and Eastern Europe’; O’Donoghue, ‘Heaney’s Classics and the Bucolic’; David Wheatley, ‘Professing Poetry: Heaney as Critic’; Andrew Murphy, ‘Heaney and the Irish Poetic Tradition’; Dillon Johnston, ‘Irish Influence and Confluence in Heaney’s Poetry’; Neil Corcoran, ‘Heaney and Yeats’; Guinn Beatten, ‘Heaney’s Wordsworth and the Poetics of Displacement’; Heather O’Donoghue, ‘Heaney, Beowulf, and the Medieval Literature of the North’; John Wilson Foster, ‘Crediting Marvels: Heaney after 50’. [Available in part at Google Books - online.]

Daniel Tobin, Passage To The Center: Imagination And The Sacred In The Poetry Of Seamus Heaney (Kentucky UP 2009), 288pp. CONTENTS: Acknowledgements [ix];introduction: One of the Venerators [1]; List of Abbreviations [13]; 1. Sense of Place: Death of a Naturaliist [15]; Almost Unnameable Energies; Door into the Dark [39]; A Poetry of Geographical Imagination: Wintering Out [68]; 4. Cooped Secret Processes and Ritual: North [103]; 5. Doors into the Light: Field Work {142]; 6. A Poet's Rite of Passage: Station Island [175]; 7. Unwriting Place: The Haw Lantern [216]; 8. Parables of Perfected Vision: Seeing Things [248]; 9. Things Apparent and Transparent: The Spirit Level [275]; Afterword [293]; Notes [305]; Bibliography [319]; Index [329]. (See Extract.)

John Dennison, Seamus Heaney and the Adequacy of Poetry [Oxford Academic] (Oxford: OUP 2015), 256pp. CONTENTS - Introduction: The Idea Of Adequacy. 1: The Voices of My Education. The Origins of An Idea. Educating Voices. The Emerging Poet-Critic. 2: Elements of Continuity. History Is A Nightmare. An Unstable Amalgam. In A Field of Force. 3: A Shift In Trust. Towards A Purer Paradigm. Differentiations. Falling Into Dualism. 4: Poetry Is Its Own Reality. Muscular Humanism. Rejecting Neruda. A Redemptive Logic. 5: To Construct Something Upon Which To Rejoice. Working Up an Idiom. The Redress of Poetry. Joy and Night. Supreme Fictions. The Prose Revisions. 6: The Humanist Wager. An Indigenous Poststructuralist?. A Cultural Poetics. Arnold and The Late Humanist. Epilogue: The Hint Half Guessed. Bibliography. I: Works By Seamus Heaney. II: Interviews With Seamus Heaney. III: Secondary Works - Index.

Publisher’s notice [Dennison, Seamus Heaney, 2015] - Heaney’s election in 1989 to Oxford Professor of Poetry heralds an enormously productive period that culminates with the publication of the collected Oxford and Nobel lectures in 1995. His expanding theoretical idiom and the artistic faith it expresses attain new fullness and definition in these lectures, as is evident in his Oxford inaugural ‘The Redress of Poetry’. There, Heaney’s re-appropriation of Christian religious and transcendent language points up the substantial fiduciary strain of knowingly constructing a theory and practice of art which, after Arnold, pretends to transcendence and ontology, a predicament further shown in the lectures ‘Joy or Night’, and ‘The Frontiers of Writing’. The logical strain of this position becomes most evident in close study of the revisions to Heaney’s previously published prose. Those revisions not only reveal Heaney’s elision of historical attachment, but are also an index of his strained effort to substantiate the redemptive function of art.

Joanne Piavanini, Cultural Memory in Seamus Heaney’s Late Work (Palgrave Macmillan 2020), pp.225 - CONTENTS: Introduction. Chapter 1: Memory and Complicity in The Spirit Level and Beowulf; Chapter 2: When the National Frame of Memory is Insufficient: The Burial At Thebes; Chapter 3; Elegies for Poets: “Breaking Bread with the Dead”; Chapter 4: Transnational Memory in District and Circle; Chapter 5: Family Memory in Human Chain and Aeneid VI.- Coda Remembering Heaney: Nationalist or ‘Portable’ Monuments.]

Geraldine Higgins, Matthew Campbell, ‘Wordsworth and Romanticism’ [61-72]xiv, 370pp. CONTENTS: Dedication [v-vi]; Contents [vii-ix]; Contributors [x-xi]; Acknowledgements [xii-xiii]; Abbreviations [xiv-xiv]; Geraldine Higgins, Introduction [1-12].  I - Mapping [.13-58]; 1. Patrick Crotty, ‘Scotland’ [15-27]; John McAuliffe, ‘England’ [28-37]; 3. Margaret Greaves, Eastern Europe [38-47]; 4. Sarah Bennett, America [48-58]. II - Influences and Traditions [59-114]: 5. Matthew Campbell, ‘Wordsworth and Romanticism’ [61-72]; 6. Ronald Schuchard, ‘Thomas Hardy’ [73-83]; 7. Margaret Mills Harper, ‘W. B. Yeats’ [84-93]; 8. Stephen Regan, ‘T.S. Eliot’ [94-103]; 9. Catriona Clutterbuck, ‘Louis MacNeice [104-114]. III - Poetics [115-64]: 10. John Redmond, ‘Lyric Form’ [117-26]; 11. Vona Groarke, ‘Proper Nouns’ [127-135]; 12. Bernard O’Donoghue, ‘Language’ [136-45]; 13. ‘Elegy’ [146-56]; Brendan Corcoran]; 14 . Simon B. Kress, ‘Music [157-64]. IV - Publishing’ [165-208]:  15. Heather Clark,‘The Belfast Group’ [167-76]; 16. Nathan Suhr-Sytsma, ‘In Print [177-87]; 17. Marilynn Richtarik, ‘Field Day’ [188-97]; 18. Aidan O'Malley, ‘Translation’ [198-208]; V - Frameworks [209-62] 19. Kieran Quinlan Catholicism’ [211-20]; 20. Florence Impens, ‘Classical Roots’ [221-30]; 21. Jonathan Allison, ‘Politics’ [231-40]; 22. Rosie Lavan, ‘Education’ [241-51]; 23. 24. Richard Rankin Russell, ‘War and Peace’ [252-62]. VI - Critical contexts [263-14]: 24. Laura O’Connor, ‘The Feminine’ [265-75]; 25. Kevin Whelan, ‘The Third Phase’ [276-85]; 26. Justin Quinn, ‘Critical Audiences’ [286-94];  27. Deepika Bahri, ‘The Postcolonial’ [295-303]; 28. Nicholas Allen, ‘The Archipelago’ [304-14]. VII - Legacy. 29. Fintan O'Toole, ‘In Public’ [317-26]; 30. Geraldine Higgins, ‘Exhibiting Heaney’ [327-37]; 31. Rand Brandes, ‘The Archive’ [338-47]; 32. Chris Morash, ‘Legacy’ [348-56]. Index [357-70]. (Available at Cambridge Univ. Press - online; accessed 11.01.2023.)

For listings of MLitt and DPhil theses on Heaney, see COPAC [with “Heaney” in ‘title’ field of Search] - online.


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