This thesis examines Seamus Heaney’s approach to translation with specific reference to Sweeney Astray, The Cure at Troy, and Beowulf. An assessment of Heaney’s translations, and the ways in which they relate to his poetry, is essential to an understanding of his work as a poet. This thesis demonstrates the centrality of translation to Heaney’s oeuvre as an effective means to comment on his Northern Irish socio-political context without producing political propaganda. Translation is a valuable means for Heaney to elucidate his contemporary experience by considering it in terms of the recorded past captured within his chosen translations. Instead of comparing the three translations with their original texts, this thesis concentrates on Heaney’s translations as a continuation of his own creative work and as catalysts for further poetry. The translations are explored in chronological order to allow a sense of Heaney’s development as a translator and his efforts to remain critically attuned to the Northern Irish political situation. The first chapter examines Heaney’s translation of the Gaelic poem Buile Suibhne, which is published as Sweeney Astray. In this first major act of translation Heaney recognises the political role that translation is able to play. He draws attention to the protagonist’s sense of cultural ease in both Britain and Ireland, which he argues is exemplary for the people of Ulster and renders the narrative particularly accessible to a Northern Irish readership due to his anglicisation of the text, which is intended as a reminder to both Catholics and Protestants of their shared identity as Irishmen. The second chapter focuses on Heaney’s translation of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, entitled The Cure at Troy. Heaney’s translation contextualises the Ancient Greek concern for personal integrity in the face of political necessity, a situation relevant to his own complex relationship with Northern Irish politics. His alterations to the text accentuate the positive aspects of the play, suggesting the very real possibility of social change within the seemingly constant violence of Northern Ireland. The third chapter explores Heaney’s engagement with the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf, as a means of coming to terms with the complex history of Irish colonisation through language. This chapter assesses Heaney’s incorporation of Irish dialectal words into his translation, which lend the poem political weight, and yet prove to be contextually appropriate, rendering Heaney’s Beowulf a masterpiece of readability and subtle political commentary.

Seamus Heaney's prose poetics return repeatedly to the adequacy of poetry, its ameliorative, restorative response to the inimical reality of life in the public domain. Drawing on manuscript as well as print sources, this thesis charts the development of this central theme, demonstrating the extent to which it threads throughout the whole of Heaney's thought, from his earliest conceptual formation to his late cultural poetics. Heaney's preoccupation with this idea largely originates in his undergraduate studies where he encounters Leavis and Arnold's accounts of poetry's adequacy: its ameliorative cultural and spiritual function. He also inherits, from Romantic and modernist influences, two differing accounts of poetry's relationship to reality. That conflicted inheritance engenders a crisis within Heaney's own early theorisation of poetry's adequacy to the violence of public life. An important period of clarification ensues, out of which emerge the dualisms of his later thought, and his emphasis on poetry's capacity to encompass, and yet remain separate from, ‘history'. Accompanied by habitual appropriation of Christian doctrine and language, these conceptual structures increasingly assume a redemptive pattern. By the mid-1990s, Heaney's humanist commitment to a ‘totally adequate' poetry has assumed a thoroughly Arnoldian character. The logical strain of his conceptual constructions—particularly the emphasis on poetry's autonomy from history—becomes acutely apparent, revealing just how appropriate the ambivalent ideal ‘adequacy' is. The subsequent expansion of Heaney's poetics into a general affirmation of the arts illuminates the fiduciary character of his trust in poetry while exposing the limits of that trust: Heaney's belief in poetry's adequacy constitutes a humanist substitute for—indeed, an ‘afterimage' of—Christian belief. This, finally, is the deep significance of the idea of adequacy to Heaney's thought: it allows us to identify precisely the Arnoldian origin, the late humanist character, and the limits of his troubled trust in poetry.

This dissertation examines a twentieth-century lineage of writers and poets concerned with signatory inscription. By this, I mean the writing, tracing, branding, embossing, tattooing, or engraving of the name of a person or place onto various kinds of surfaces, as well as other forms of marking that approximate autography. My contention is that James Joyce's novels demonstrate an explicit, underexplored concern with signature and the different imaginary investments (erotic, legal, preservative) that accompany its presence in the world. In Joyce's wake, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, and Don DeLillo all produce texts that both engage with Joyce's novels and think carefully about the potential of the signature as a material object. My first chapter, 'James Joyce's Signatures', explores how nineteenth-century developments in graphology and forensic identification inherit ideas from the medicinal doctrine of signatures. I argue that this expanded sense of signature offers a unique perspective on Joyce's taxonomic representation, which questions the boundaries between a body of text and (non)human bodies. The presence of legal trials in Ulysses adds a forensic element to Joyce's signatory imagination. This element is taken to its logical extreme in 'Nausicaa', where scents, sounds, and impressions become bodily, as opposed to alphabetical, signatures - produced by humans, waves, and stones. The second chapter, 'Samuel Beckett and the Endurance of Names', continues this line of argument, showing how Beckett inherits Joyce's interest in autographic inscription, but employs it for different ends. While the epitaphic tradition relies upon hard materials such as stone and metal to preserve lettering, Beckett's interest in excrement ('First Love') and mud (How It Is) remaps inscription onto immanence. Rather than seeking immortality through lithic preservation, Beckett's characters yearn to 'return to the mineral state', to have their bodies subsumed and dispersed throughout a greater container. The third chapter, 'Seamus Heaney and the Phonetics of Place', turns from the signature of persons to the signature of places, from prose to poetry. Explicitly glossing poems like 'Anahorish', 'Toome', and 'Broagh' as inspired by Stephen Dedalus, Heaney performs a critical repatriation of Joyce's work. Joyce uses fictional, motivated relations between names and referents to construct a linguistic correlative for Stephen's youthful naivety - a technique that personalises his lexicon, privileging Stephen's own associations over those of nationality, language, or religion. Heaney, on the other hand, politicises this process, utilising phonetic association to forge imaginary correspondences between Irish place-names and the people and places they denote. The final chapter, 'Don DeLillo, Encryption, and Writing Technologies', examines the novels of Don DeLillo and his interest in signatory technologies. Drawing upon archival research conducted on the manuscripts of Americana, Ratner's Star and The Names, I show that Joyce influenced the composition of these texts to a greater extent than previously thought. In particular, DeLillo uses Joyce to think through the technological dimensions of writing, comparing older methods of inscription like boustrophedon to modern communication technologies via Ulysses.

My research in this thesis covers the religious discourse of six contemporary poets who write belief from a position of calamity. Yehuda Amichai writes from the constant wars fought since the founding of the state of Israel; Anne Sexton from psychiatric illness; Seamus Heaney from the sectarian violence of Ireland; Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs from the twentieth century’s greatest calamity, the Holocaust; and Yves Bonnefoy, from the language theories of post-modernism, which are calamitous for a poet. (For complete abstract open document)

Zugl.: Zürich, University, Diss., 2005.

This essay argues that the depiction of women in Seamus Heaney’s poems “Bog Queen” and “Punishment” results from the male gaze in three ways: the narrative viewpoint, stereotypical characterization, and the objectification of the female body. The following essay analyses the poems through an ecofeminist perspective that enables examination of the female characters as personifications of nature – “Bog Queen” as Mother Earth and the victim of “Punishment” as Nerthus, the fertility goddess. The analysis explores three areas; historical context, ‘The Feminine Principle,’ and Nussbaum’s list of ‘Feminist Perspectives on Objectification’ to answer how the male gaze is present in the three aspects. The male gaze is argued to be attributed to an androcentric narrative that presents a man and country’s sense of revenge, stereotypes that are totems of the male fantasy, and dehumanizing sexual objectification that enables appreciation of the dead bodies of women.

<p>This thesis examines how Seamus Heaney’s <em>North </em>attempts to bear witness to the prolonged political conflict in Ireland known as the Troubles. Drawing upon the intersecting discourses of trauma and testimony as theorized by Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, it argues that <em>North </em>operates as an experimental enterprise evaluating diverging methods of poetically representing and working through the experience of trauma. Though these methodologies seek to convey the Irish Troubles, neither is wholly effective and both are ultimately eschewed by the poet.</p> <p>My first chapter examines Part I and the invocation of representative models—which are at times historical, imaginative and mythical—in order to render legible the experience of trauma. I suggest that the poem’s invocation of human remains exhumed from Jutland bogs as one such model may not be ethical and then read this representation within a broader sense historiographical writing supplied by Michel de Certeau’s <em>The Writing of History</em>. My second chapter looks at Part II and the poet’s assertion of an autobiographical “I” in order to engage directly with the Troubles. I read this part of the collection primarily as a meditation on the limitations of community and poetry, which undercuts the poet’s attempt to deliver testimony. In my conclusion, I suggest Heaney’s testimonial enterprise may not fulfill its whole potential because of its publication in the midst of the Troubles, which forecloses the possibility of futurity, a criticism which may not hold true for the poet’s later collections.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

The aim of this paper was to analyse foregrounding elements in Seamus Heaney’s poem “Digging.” The analysis shows that deviances from everyday non-literary language, i.e. foregrounding, are both likely to evoke defamiliarisation in readers and also provide readers with the likelihood of having an aesthetic experience. This has been done by adhering to the literary theory of Cognitive stylistics and to its related literary concepts, namely the theory of foregrounding. Furthermore, this paper also aimed to provide examples of how “Digging” can be taught in a pedagogical setting. In short, this paper argues for a teaching of poetry that focuses on the sensual aesthetic qualities in a poem. Therefore, this paper supports the claim that students need to attentively read, watch and perform poetry in order to experience its sounds and textures fully. Such an approach corresponds well to an aesthetic education which aims at developing, in students, a heightened awareness of and appreciation for all that touches our lives. Lastly, the pedagogical implementations showed that a foregrounding analysis of “Digging” can be fruitful to incorporate in the EFL classroom. Apart from evoking defamiliarisation and aesthetic reactions, a stylistic analysis can also serve to raise students' linguistic and literary awareness. As a result, students can discover why poets make particular language choices as well as develop their ability to interpret literary works.

Στόχος αυτής της διπλωματικής εργασίας είναι η διερεύνηση του τρόπου με τον οποίον ο Βορειοϊρλανδός ποιητής Seamus Heaney, έχοντας επηρεαστεί από τις Ταραχές και την αγριότητα του Ιρλανδικού εμφυλίου πολέμου, αντιλαμβάνεται το σύγχρονο πόλεμο στην Βόρειο Ιρλανδία μέσα από την ποιητική σύνδεσή του με τον αρχαίο μύθο και την αρχαία Ελληνική τραγωδία. Αντικείμενα μελέτης αυτής της εργασίας αποτελούν το θεατρικό έργο The Cure at Troy (1990), που είναι διασκευή του Φιλοκτήτη του Σοφοκλή, και μια σειρά πέντε ποιημάτων, βασισμένων στην Ορέστεια του Αισχύλου, με τίτλο Η Βίγλα των Μυκηνών (Mycenae Lookout) από τη συλλογή Το Αλφάδι (The Spirit Level 1996). Στο πρώτο κεφάλαιο θα γίνει μία σύντομη ιστορική αναδρομή αναφορικά με τις πολιτικές και κοινωνικές συνθήκες που επικράτησαν για αιώνες και εξέθρεψαν το Ιρλανδικό πρόβλημα. Θα απαντηθεί γιατί στην Ιρλανδία καλλιεργήθηκε η μετάφραση και η διασκευή κλασικών έργων σε τέτοια έκταση, και θα καταδειχθεί ότι μέσα σε αυτό το περιβάλλον καταπίεσης και κοινωνικών διακρίσεων η κλασική παιδεία, με μακραίωνη παράδοση στην Ιρλανδία, συνδυάστηκε με την αμφισβήτηση της Βρετανικής κυριαρχίας επί της νήσου. Ακολούθως θα συζητηθεί για ποιο λόγο, κατά την τελευταία τριακονταετία ειδικότερα, αρκετοί σύγχρονοι Ιρλανδοί ποιητές και θεατρικοί συγγραφείς, σε μία προσπάθεια να ερμηνεύσουν τα διάφορα κοινωνικά, πολιτικά και θρησκευτικά προβλήματα που απασχολούν τόσο την κοινωνία της Δημοκρατίας της Ιρλανδίας όσο και αυτήν της Βόρειας Ιρλανδίας (Ulster), στράφηκαν προς την αρχαία Ελληνική τραγωδία, κάνοντας διασκευές και προσαρμόζοντας τα αρχαία κείμενα στις σύγχρονες συνθήκες. Σε αυτή την κατεύθυνση σημαντικό ρόλο έπαιξε ο θεατρικός οργανισμός Field Day, του οποίου η θεματολογία προσανατολίστηκε σε μεταφράσεις και διασκευές αρχαίων ελληνικών τραγωδιών. Στο δεύτερο και το τρίτο κεφάλαιο θα αναλυθούν το θεατρικό έργο The Cure at Troy και τα πέντε ποιήματα της σειράς Η Βίγλα των Μυκηνών, αντίστοιχα, και θα διερευνηθούν οι τρόποι με τους οποίους ο ποιητής διαφοροποιείται από τα αρχαία πρωτότυπα έργα. Στη συνέχεια θα εξεταστεί ο τρόπος με τον οποίον ο Heaney χρησιμοποιεί τα αρχαία έργα για να πραγματευτεί θέματα όπως η σημασία της ‘πληγής’ της Ιρλανδίας και της ‘θεραπείας’, η σύγκρουση μεταξύ προσωπικής ακεραιότητας και πολιτικής σκοπιμότητας, η κοινωνική ευθύνη του ατόμου, η απώλεια της λογικής και της ανθρωπιάς μπροστά στη βιαιότητα του πολέμου. Μέσω του μύθου, ο ποιητής καταγγέλλει την αποικιοκρατία, την εκδικητικότητα, το μίσος, την πολιτική βία, τον πόλεμο και τις συνέπειές τους στη ζωή των συμπατριωτών του. Επίσης θα γίνει εκτενής αναφορά στην έντονη συζήτηση που προκάλεσε το θεατρικό έργο The Cure at Troy σχετικά με το κατά πόσο υπάρχει αντιστοιχία μεταξύ των αρχαίων και των σύγχρονων πολιτικών καταστάσεων και με το αν οι χαρακτήρες στο έργο του Heaney αντιπροσωπεύουν σύγχρονα ιστορικά πρόσωπα που έλαβαν μέρος στον Ιρλανδικό εμφύλιο πόλεμο. Μέσα από την εις βάθος ανάλυση του θεατρικού έργου και των πέντε ποιημάτων η εργασία θα καταλήξει στο συμπέρασμα ότι ο Heaney χρησιμοποιεί τους τραγικούς χαρακτήρες για να προβάλλει ένα όραμα για το μέλλον και για να εκφράσει την ελπίδα του για εθνική συμφιλίωση και τον πόθο για ειρήνευση και επιστροφή σε μία φυσιολογική ζωή. Τέλος, θα αναδυθεί ο βασανιστικός προβληματισμός που απασχολεί τον Heaney διαχρονικά, αναφορικά με τον ρόλο του ποιητή μέσα σε μια κοινωνία που ταλανίζεται από την κρίση και με το κατά πόσο η ποίηση έχει τη δύναμη να επηρεάζει την κοινωνία χωρίς να παράγει πολιτική προπαγάνδα. / The present thesis studies how Seamus Heaney, having been highly influenced by the ferocity of the ‘Troubles’, perceives the civil war in Northern Ireland through its poetic connection with ancient Greek myth and drama. Study subjects of this thesis are Heaney’s play The Cure at Troy (1990), which is an adaptation of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, and a sequence of five poems by Heaney titled ‘Mycenae Lookout’ (The Spirit Level 1996) which is based on Aeschylus’ trilogy the Oresteia. The first chapter comprises of a short historic retrospection on the political and social conditions that prevailed for centuries and generated the Irish problem. It attempts to answer why the translation and adaptation of classic plays was used so extensively, and it suggests that in an oppressive environment of social and religious discrimination, classical education, of a long tradition in the island, was associated with the questioning of the British rule over Ireland. It will be shown that over the last thirty years in particular, many contemporary Irish poets and playwrights, in an effort to interpret various socio-political problems that concern the Republic of Ireland as well as Northern Ireland (Ulster), have been inspired by ancient Greek drama. Towards this direction, the Field Day Theatre Company has played a crucial role on the reworking of ancient Greek tragedies. An analysis of Heaney’s play The Cure at Troy and of the five poems of Mycenae Lookout will be presented in the second and third chapter, respectively. In both chapters, there will be a discussion on the ways his work is differentiated from the ancient original plays, and on how he treats subjects such as the significance of the ‘wound’ of Ireland and of the ‘cure’, the conflict between personal integrity and political expediency, the responsibility of the individual towards the community, the loss of reason and humanity in times of war. Through the ancient myths the poet denounces colonialism, vindictiveness, bigotry, faction, political violence and their consequences in the life of Irishmen. There will also be an extensive account on the issue of political allegory raised in the play The Cure at Troy, and on whether there is an equivalence between the ancient and the contemporary political situation. The thesis epilogue will come to the conclusion that Heaney uses the tragic characters to project a vision for the future of Northern Ireland, and to express his hope and desire for national reconciliation and peace. Finally, there will emerge the tantalizing problem that has been occupying Heaney’s mind over the years regarding the role of the poet in a community that has been harassed by the war crisis and whether poetry has the power to influence the society without producing political propaganda.

Part I of this thesis has been written with a view to exploring the relevance a text over 2500 years old has for contemporary ars poetica. From a detailed study of ‘The Book of Job’ I highlight three main tropes, ‘cognitive dissonance’, ‘tĕšuvah’, and ‘dark saying’, and demonstrate how these might inform the working methods of the contemporary poet. In the introduction I define these tropes in their theological and historical context. Chapter one provides a detailed examination of ‘Job’, its antecedents and its influence on literature. In chapters two and three I examine in detail techniques of Classical Hebrew poetry employed in ‘Job’ and argue for a confluence between literary technique and Jobian cosmology. Stylistically, the rest of the thesis is a critical meditation on how the main tropes of ‘Job’ can be mapped onto contemporary ars poetica. In chapter four I initiate an exploration into varying responses to cognitive dissonance, suggesting how the false comforters and Job represent different approaches to, and stages of, poetic composition. A critique of an essay by David Daiches is followed by a detailed study of Seamus Heaney. In chapter five I map the trope of tĕšuvah onto contemporary ars poetica with reference to the poetry of Pilinszky, Popa, and to the poems and critical work of Ted Hughes. The chapter concludes with a brief exploration into the common ground shared between the terms tĕšuvah and versus as a means of highlighting the importance of proper maturation of the work. Chapter six consists of a discussion of how the kind of ‘dark saying’ found in ‘Job’ 38-41 impacts on an understanding of poetic language and its capacity to accelerate our comprehension of reality. I support this notion with excerpts from Joseph Brodsky and a close reading of Montale’s ‘L’anguilla’. Chapter seven further develops the notion of poetry as a means of propulsion beyond the familiar, the predictable or the clichéd, by examining the function of metaphor and what I term ‘quick thinking’, and by referring to two recently published poems by John Burnside and Don Paterson. In chapter eight I draw out the overall motif implied by a close reading of ‘Job’, that of the weathering of an ordeal, and map this onto ars poetica, looking at two aspects of labour, which I identify as ‘endurance’ and ‘letting go’, crucial for the proper maturation of a poem or body of poems. The concluding chapter develops the theme of the temple first discussed in chapter one. I argue for a connection between Job as a temple initiate, who has the capacity to atone for the false comforters, and poetry as a form of ‘at-one-ment’. This notion is supported by reference to Geoffrey Hill and Rilke. Part II of the thesis consists of a selection of my own poems, titled ‘Bedrock’.