Overview

This book demonstrates the ways in which Virgil's are poems that Heaney 'lived with long and dreamily', especially the descent into the underworld in Aeneid VI. It shows that in his original English poems as well as his translations from Latin, Heaney conjures and transforms familiar Virgilian motifs. The rhythm, pace and musicality of Virgil's hexameters can be heard in Heaney's pastoral eclogues and sonnet sequences. And Virgil's life and times, as well as his poetry, contribute to the shaping of Heaney's prose poetics. In dialogue with Virgil, as well as other classical and modern poets, Heaney develops his notion of the redress of poetry: the counterbalance that poetry can offer against historical tragedy, suffering and loss. The book explores Heaney's intensely productive, thirty-year dialogue with Virgil, beginning with his translation of 'The Golden Bough' in the 1980s and extending through several major volumes, including Seeing Things, The Midnight Verdict, Electric Light, District and Circle, The Riverbank Field, Human Chain, and the posthumously published translation of Aeneid Book VI.

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9781474454407

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Reviews

""Falconer's powerful and probing study of Seamus Heaney's career-long relationship with Virgil reveals the Latin poet to be Heaney's inner interlocutor"". Her sensitive close analysis of the wide-ranging intertextualities of Heaney's poetry brilliantly uncovers his complex identifications with Virgil as a poet with strong attachment to his rural roots."""" -Susanna Braund, University of British Columbia

"""Falconer's powerful and probing study of Seamus Heaney's career-long relationship with Virgil reveals the Latin poet to be Heaney's inner interlocutor"". Her sensitive close analysis of the wide-ranging intertextualities of Heaney's poetry brilliantly uncovers his complex identifications with Virgil as a poet with strong attachment to his rural roots."""" -Susanna Braund, University of British Columbia"

Author Information

Rachel Falconer, Professor and Chair of Modern English Literature, University of Lausanne.

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