Seamus Heaney, Virgil and the Good of Poetry
Rachel Falconer, "Seamus Heaney, Virgil and the Good of Poetry"
English | ISBN: 1474454399 | 2022 | 312 pages | PDF | 12 MB
English | ISBN: 1474454399 | 2022 | 312 pages | PDF | 12 MB
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
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