Author: Ian Hickey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100041681X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 191
Book Description
Haunted Heaney: Spectres and the Poetry looks at the ghosts and spectres present within the poetry of the Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney. Covering Heaney’s work from his first collection, Death of a Naturalist, to his final collection, Human Chain, this volume analyses Heaney’s poetry through the lens of hauntology as presented by Jacques Derrida in Specters of Marx. This book presents spectres and ghosts not in the conventional sense, as purely supernatural, physical manifestations haunting a place, but instead as having a non-physical presence. In this sense past cultures, societies, texts, poets, and memories are examined as having a spectral influence on Heaney’s writing. His work is indebted to hauntedness as the past in all its forms sutures itself within the present of his thinking and writing, and our reading of the poetry. Topics for discussion include the Norse spectres in the early poetry; British colonialism and its haunting influence on the poet; a renewed look at the bog poems as being influenced by the spectral; the classical influence of Virgil and Dante; and a reading of ‘Route 110’ that incorporates the major instances of Heaney’s career into a singular poem. The book also incorporates Heaney’s prose work and interviews into the discussion and uses these works as a metacommentary to the poetry offering a deeper insight into the mind of one of Ireland’s greatest writers.
Haunted Heaney
Author: Ian Hickey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100041681X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 191
Book Description
Haunted Heaney: Spectres and the Poetry looks at the ghosts and spectres present within the poetry of the Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney. Covering Heaney’s work from his first collection, Death of a Naturalist, to his final collection, Human Chain, this volume analyses Heaney’s poetry through the lens of hauntology as presented by Jacques Derrida in Specters of Marx. This book presents spectres and ghosts not in the conventional sense, as purely supernatural, physical manifestations haunting a place, but instead as having a non-physical presence. In this sense past cultures, societies, texts, poets, and memories are examined as having a spectral influence on Heaney’s writing. His work is indebted to hauntedness as the past in all its forms sutures itself within the present of his thinking and writing, and our reading of the poetry. Topics for discussion include the Norse spectres in the early poetry; British colonialism and its haunting influence on the poet; a renewed look at the bog poems as being influenced by the spectral; the classical influence of Virgil and Dante; and a reading of ‘Route 110’ that incorporates the major instances of Heaney’s career into a singular poem. The book also incorporates Heaney’s prose work and interviews into the discussion and uses these works as a metacommentary to the poetry offering a deeper insight into the mind of one of Ireland’s greatest writers.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100041681X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 191
Book Description
Haunted Heaney: Spectres and the Poetry looks at the ghosts and spectres present within the poetry of the Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney. Covering Heaney’s work from his first collection, Death of a Naturalist, to his final collection, Human Chain, this volume analyses Heaney’s poetry through the lens of hauntology as presented by Jacques Derrida in Specters of Marx. This book presents spectres and ghosts not in the conventional sense, as purely supernatural, physical manifestations haunting a place, but instead as having a non-physical presence. In this sense past cultures, societies, texts, poets, and memories are examined as having a spectral influence on Heaney’s writing. His work is indebted to hauntedness as the past in all its forms sutures itself within the present of his thinking and writing, and our reading of the poetry. Topics for discussion include the Norse spectres in the early poetry; British colonialism and its haunting influence on the poet; a renewed look at the bog poems as being influenced by the spectral; the classical influence of Virgil and Dante; and a reading of ‘Route 110’ that incorporates the major instances of Heaney’s career into a singular poem. The book also incorporates Heaney’s prose work and interviews into the discussion and uses these works as a metacommentary to the poetry offering a deeper insight into the mind of one of Ireland’s greatest writers.
Seamus Heaney’s Mythmaking
Author: Ian Hickey
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000867358
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Seamus Heaney’s Mythmaking examines Seamus Heaney’s poetic engagement with myth from his earliest work to the posthumous publication of Aeneid Book VI. The essays explore the ways in which Heaney creates his own mythic outlook through multiple mythic lenses. They reveal how Heaney adopts a demiurgic role throughout his career, creating a poetic universe that draws on diverse mythic cycles from Greco-Roman to Irish and Norse to Native American. In doing so, this collection is in dialogue with recent work on Heaney’s engagement with myth. However, it is unique in its wide-ranging perspective, extending beyond Ancient and Classical influences. In its focus on Heaney’s personal metamorphosis of several mythic cycles, this collection reveals more fully the poet’s unique approach to mythmaking, from his engagement with the act of translation to transnational influences on his work and from his poetic transformations to the poetry’s boundary-crossing transitions. Combining the work of established Heaney scholars with the perspectives of early-career researchers, this collection contains a wealth of original scholarship that reveals Heaney’s expansive mythic mind. Mythmaking, an act for which Heaney has faced severe criticism, is reconsidered by all contributors, prompting multifaceted and nuanced readings of the poet’s work.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000867358
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Seamus Heaney’s Mythmaking examines Seamus Heaney’s poetic engagement with myth from his earliest work to the posthumous publication of Aeneid Book VI. The essays explore the ways in which Heaney creates his own mythic outlook through multiple mythic lenses. They reveal how Heaney adopts a demiurgic role throughout his career, creating a poetic universe that draws on diverse mythic cycles from Greco-Roman to Irish and Norse to Native American. In doing so, this collection is in dialogue with recent work on Heaney’s engagement with myth. However, it is unique in its wide-ranging perspective, extending beyond Ancient and Classical influences. In its focus on Heaney’s personal metamorphosis of several mythic cycles, this collection reveals more fully the poet’s unique approach to mythmaking, from his engagement with the act of translation to transnational influences on his work and from his poetic transformations to the poetry’s boundary-crossing transitions. Combining the work of established Heaney scholars with the perspectives of early-career researchers, this collection contains a wealth of original scholarship that reveals Heaney’s expansive mythic mind. Mythmaking, an act for which Heaney has faced severe criticism, is reconsidered by all contributors, prompting multifaceted and nuanced readings of the poet’s work.
Poetry Of Seamus Heaney
Author: Elmer Andrews
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349193372
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 227
Book Description
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349193372
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 227
Book Description
Seamus Heaney
Author: Michael Parker
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 9780877453987
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
In the nearly thirty years of his writing career the Irish poet Seamus Heaney has established himself as an enduring world writer. This book provides the fullest account yet of his early life as an Ulster Catholic and the experiences, influences, and relationships - personal, literary, and political - that shaped his poetic development and awareness in the midst of the complex and violent history that has formed modern Ireland. Michael Parker's extensive research includes a considerable amount of original material, such as photographs and interviews with Heaney and with many key personalities from his past and present. Parker presents fresh insights into the background and possible sources of Heaney's poems, commentaries on unpublished poems and drafts, and careful readings of each of the poet's collections up to and including the 1991 Seeing Things.
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 9780877453987
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
In the nearly thirty years of his writing career the Irish poet Seamus Heaney has established himself as an enduring world writer. This book provides the fullest account yet of his early life as an Ulster Catholic and the experiences, influences, and relationships - personal, literary, and political - that shaped his poetic development and awareness in the midst of the complex and violent history that has formed modern Ireland. Michael Parker's extensive research includes a considerable amount of original material, such as photographs and interviews with Heaney and with many key personalities from his past and present. Parker presents fresh insights into the background and possible sources of Heaney's poems, commentaries on unpublished poems and drafts, and careful readings of each of the poet's collections up to and including the 1991 Seeing Things.
Seamus Heaney in Context
Author: Geraldine Higgins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316850528
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 641
Book Description
Few poets have captured the imagination of the world like Seamus Heaney. Recognized as one of the truly outstanding poets of our time, Heaney's work is both critically acclaimed and popular with the general reader. It is taught in classrooms across the globe and has been translated into more than twenty-seven languages. Presenting original research from an international field of scholars, Seamus Heaney in Context offers new pathways to explore the places, times and influences that made Heaney a poet. Drawing on newly available archival and print sources, these essays situate Heaney in a multitude of contexts that help readers navigate received ideas about his life and work. In mapping intersecting themes in the current terrain of Heaney criticism, this study also signposts new directions for understanding Heaney's poetry in future contexts.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316850528
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 641
Book Description
Few poets have captured the imagination of the world like Seamus Heaney. Recognized as one of the truly outstanding poets of our time, Heaney's work is both critically acclaimed and popular with the general reader. It is taught in classrooms across the globe and has been translated into more than twenty-seven languages. Presenting original research from an international field of scholars, Seamus Heaney in Context offers new pathways to explore the places, times and influences that made Heaney a poet. Drawing on newly available archival and print sources, these essays situate Heaney in a multitude of contexts that help readers navigate received ideas about his life and work. In mapping intersecting themes in the current terrain of Heaney criticism, this study also signposts new directions for understanding Heaney's poetry in future contexts.
Preposterous Virgil
Author: Juan Christian Pellicer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350198234
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
This study in reception develops close readings of English literature as means of interrogating Virgil's texts. Through four case studies, bookended by wide-ranging introductory and concluding chapters, this book shows how interpreting the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid through modern responses can serve to focus on aspects of Virgil that would otherwise be differently perceived or else escape notice altogether. Juan Christian Pellicer probes our perceptions of the three Virgilian genres (pastoral, georgic, and epic) and analyzes the ways in which modern reconfigurations of these genres can inform our readings of Virgil's works, as well as help us realize how our own ideas about Virgil reflect the literary receptions through which we approach his texts. This book offers a practical demonstration of classical reception and its value as a critical procedure. By testing the value of modern responses to Virgil as means by which to read his texts, Pellicer critically examines a central tenet of reception studies of classical authors, namely that our understanding of their work can benefit from the receptions through which we perceive them. The reader will find Virgil's texts reconfigured in challenging new ways and will find new appreciations of the classical traditions that inform key texts in the English canon.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350198234
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
This study in reception develops close readings of English literature as means of interrogating Virgil's texts. Through four case studies, bookended by wide-ranging introductory and concluding chapters, this book shows how interpreting the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid through modern responses can serve to focus on aspects of Virgil that would otherwise be differently perceived or else escape notice altogether. Juan Christian Pellicer probes our perceptions of the three Virgilian genres (pastoral, georgic, and epic) and analyzes the ways in which modern reconfigurations of these genres can inform our readings of Virgil's works, as well as help us realize how our own ideas about Virgil reflect the literary receptions through which we approach his texts. This book offers a practical demonstration of classical reception and its value as a critical procedure. By testing the value of modern responses to Virgil as means by which to read his texts, Pellicer critically examines a central tenet of reception studies of classical authors, namely that our understanding of their work can benefit from the receptions through which we perceive them. The reader will find Virgil's texts reconfigured in challenging new ways and will find new appreciations of the classical traditions that inform key texts in the English canon.
The Frontier of Writing
Author: Ian Hickey
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040037828
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
The Frontier of Writing: A Study of Seamus Heaney’s Prose is the first collection of essays solely focused on examining the Nobel prize winning poet’s prose. The collection offers ten different perspectives on this body of work which vary from sustained thematic analyses on poetic form, the construction of identity, and poetry as redress, to a series of close readings of prose writing on poetic exemplars such as Robert Lowell, Patrick Kavanagh, W.B Yeats, Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin and Brian Friel. Seamus Heaney’s prose is extensive in its literary depth, knowledge, critical awareness and its span. During the course of his life, he published six collections of prose entitled Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978, Place and Displacement: Recent Poetry of Northern Ireland, The Government of the Tongue: The 1986 T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures and Other Critical Writings, The Place of Writing, The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures and Finders Keepers. Each of these texts is addressed in the collection alongside occasional and specific essays such as ‘Crediting Poetry’, ‘Writer and Righter’ and ‘Mossbawn via Mantua: Ireland in/and Europe, Cross-currents and Exchanges’, among many others. This book is a comprehensive and timely study of Seamus Heaney’s prose from leading international scholars in the field.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040037828
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
The Frontier of Writing: A Study of Seamus Heaney’s Prose is the first collection of essays solely focused on examining the Nobel prize winning poet’s prose. The collection offers ten different perspectives on this body of work which vary from sustained thematic analyses on poetic form, the construction of identity, and poetry as redress, to a series of close readings of prose writing on poetic exemplars such as Robert Lowell, Patrick Kavanagh, W.B Yeats, Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin and Brian Friel. Seamus Heaney’s prose is extensive in its literary depth, knowledge, critical awareness and its span. During the course of his life, he published six collections of prose entitled Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978, Place and Displacement: Recent Poetry of Northern Ireland, The Government of the Tongue: The 1986 T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures and Other Critical Writings, The Place of Writing, The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures and Finders Keepers. Each of these texts is addressed in the collection alongside occasional and specific essays such as ‘Crediting Poetry’, ‘Writer and Righter’ and ‘Mossbawn via Mantua: Ireland in/and Europe, Cross-currents and Exchanges’, among many others. This book is a comprehensive and timely study of Seamus Heaney’s prose from leading international scholars in the field.
Seamus Heaney and the Classics
Author: Stephen Harrison
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192528181
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet, made a significant contribution to classical reception in modern poetry; though occasional essays have appeared in the past, this volume is the first to be wholly dedicated to this perspective on his work. Comprising literary criticism by scholars of both classical reception and contemporary literature in English, it includes contributions from critics who are also poets, as well as from theatre practitioners on their interpretations and productions of Heaney's versions of Greek drama; well-known names are joined by early-career contributors, and friends and collaborators of Heaney sit alongside those who admired him from afar. The papers focus on two main areas: Heaney's fascination with Greek drama and myth - shown primarily in his two Sophoclean versions, but also in his engagement in other poems with Hesiod, with Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and with myths such as that of Antaeus - and his interest in Latin poetry, primarily that of Virgil but also that of Horace; a version of an Horatian ode was famously the vehicle for Heaney's comment on the events of 11 September 2001 in 'Anything Can Happen' (District and Circle, 2006). Although a number of the contributions cover similar material, they do so from distinctively different angles: for example, Heaney's interest in Virgil is linked with the traditions of Irish poetry, his capacity as a translator, and his annotations in his own text of a standard translation, as well as being investigated in its long development over his poetic career, while his Greek dramas are considered as verbal poetry, as comments on Irish politics, and as stage-plays with concomitant issues of production and interpretation. Heaney's posthumous translation of Virgil's Aeneid VI (2016) comes in for considerable attention, and this will be the first volume to study this major work from several angles.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192528181
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet, made a significant contribution to classical reception in modern poetry; though occasional essays have appeared in the past, this volume is the first to be wholly dedicated to this perspective on his work. Comprising literary criticism by scholars of both classical reception and contemporary literature in English, it includes contributions from critics who are also poets, as well as from theatre practitioners on their interpretations and productions of Heaney's versions of Greek drama; well-known names are joined by early-career contributors, and friends and collaborators of Heaney sit alongside those who admired him from afar. The papers focus on two main areas: Heaney's fascination with Greek drama and myth - shown primarily in his two Sophoclean versions, but also in his engagement in other poems with Hesiod, with Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and with myths such as that of Antaeus - and his interest in Latin poetry, primarily that of Virgil but also that of Horace; a version of an Horatian ode was famously the vehicle for Heaney's comment on the events of 11 September 2001 in 'Anything Can Happen' (District and Circle, 2006). Although a number of the contributions cover similar material, they do so from distinctively different angles: for example, Heaney's interest in Virgil is linked with the traditions of Irish poetry, his capacity as a translator, and his annotations in his own text of a standard translation, as well as being investigated in its long development over his poetic career, while his Greek dramas are considered as verbal poetry, as comments on Irish politics, and as stage-plays with concomitant issues of production and interpretation. Heaney's posthumous translation of Virgil's Aeneid VI (2016) comes in for considerable attention, and this will be the first volume to study this major work from several angles.
War and Aesthetics
Author: Jens Bjering
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262377632
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335
Book Description
A provocative edited collection that takes an original approach toward the black box of military technology, surveillance, and AI—and reveals the aesthetic dimension of warfare. War and Aesthetics gathers leading artists, political scientists, and scholars to outline the aesthetic dimension of warfare and offer a novel perspective on its contemporary character and the construction of its potential futures. Edited by a team of four scholars, Jens Bjering, Anders Engberg-Pedersen, Solveig Gade, and Christine Strandmose Toft, this timely volume examines warfare through the lens of aesthetics, arguing that the aesthetic configurations of perception, technology, and time are central to the artistic engagement with warfare, just as they are key to military AI, weaponry, and satellite surveillance. People mostly think of war as the violent manifestation of a political rationality. But when war is viewed through the lens of aesthesis—meaning perception and sensibility—military technology becomes an applied science of sensory cognition. An outgrowth of three war seminars that took place in Copenhagen between 2018 and 2021, War and Aesthetics engages in three main areas of inquiry—the rethinking of aesthetics in the field of art and in the military sphere; the exploration of techno-aesthetics and the wider political and theoretical implications of war technology; and finally, the analysis of future temporalities that these technologies produce. The editors gather various traditions and perspectives ranging from literature to media studies to international relations, creating a unique historical and scientific approach that broadly traces the entanglement of war and aesthetics across the arts, social sciences, and humanities from ancient times to the present. As international conflict looms between superpowers, War and Aesthetics presents new and illuminating ways to think about future conflict in a world where violence is only ever a few steps away. Contributors Louise Amoore, Ryan Bishop, Jens Bjering, James Der Derian, Anthony Downey, Anders Engberg-Pedersen, Solveig Gade, Mark B. Hansen, Caroline Holmqvist, Vivienne Jabri, Caren Kaplan, Phil Klay, Kate McLoughlin, Elaine Scarry, Christine Strandmose Toft, Joseph Vogl, Arkadi Zaides
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262377632
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335
Book Description
A provocative edited collection that takes an original approach toward the black box of military technology, surveillance, and AI—and reveals the aesthetic dimension of warfare. War and Aesthetics gathers leading artists, political scientists, and scholars to outline the aesthetic dimension of warfare and offer a novel perspective on its contemporary character and the construction of its potential futures. Edited by a team of four scholars, Jens Bjering, Anders Engberg-Pedersen, Solveig Gade, and Christine Strandmose Toft, this timely volume examines warfare through the lens of aesthetics, arguing that the aesthetic configurations of perception, technology, and time are central to the artistic engagement with warfare, just as they are key to military AI, weaponry, and satellite surveillance. People mostly think of war as the violent manifestation of a political rationality. But when war is viewed through the lens of aesthesis—meaning perception and sensibility—military technology becomes an applied science of sensory cognition. An outgrowth of three war seminars that took place in Copenhagen between 2018 and 2021, War and Aesthetics engages in three main areas of inquiry—the rethinking of aesthetics in the field of art and in the military sphere; the exploration of techno-aesthetics and the wider political and theoretical implications of war technology; and finally, the analysis of future temporalities that these technologies produce. The editors gather various traditions and perspectives ranging from literature to media studies to international relations, creating a unique historical and scientific approach that broadly traces the entanglement of war and aesthetics across the arts, social sciences, and humanities from ancient times to the present. As international conflict looms between superpowers, War and Aesthetics presents new and illuminating ways to think about future conflict in a world where violence is only ever a few steps away. Contributors Louise Amoore, Ryan Bishop, Jens Bjering, James Der Derian, Anthony Downey, Anders Engberg-Pedersen, Solveig Gade, Mark B. Hansen, Caroline Holmqvist, Vivienne Jabri, Caren Kaplan, Phil Klay, Kate McLoughlin, Elaine Scarry, Christine Strandmose Toft, Joseph Vogl, Arkadi Zaides
Seamus Heaney's Gifts
Author: Henry Hart
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 080718344X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 361
Book Description
“The fact of the matter,” Seamus Heaney said in a 1997 interview with the Paris Review, “is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry.” Throughout his career, Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, maintained that poetry came to him from a mysterious source like a gift of grace. He also believed that the recipient of this sort of boon had an ethical obligation to share it with others. Seamus Heaney’s Gifts, by the noted scholar and poet Henry Hart, offers the first comprehensive examination of Heaney’s preoccupation with gifts and gift-exchange. Drawing on extensive research in Heaney’s papers, as well as three decades of correspondence with the poet, Hart presents a richly detailed study of Heaney’s life and work that foregrounds the Irishman’s commitment to the vocation of poetry as a public art to be shared with audiences and readers around the world. Heaney traced his devotion to gifts back to the actual present of a Conway Stewart fountain pen that his parents gave him at the age of twelve when he left his family farm in Northern Ireland to attend a private Catholic secondary school in Londonderry. He commemorated this gift in “Digging,” the first poem in his first book, and in two poems he wrote near the end of his life: “The Conway Stewart” and “On the Gift of a Fountain Pen.” Friends and doctors had warned him that his endless globetrotting to give lectures and poetry readings had damaged his health. Yet he felt obligated to share his talent with audiences around the world until his death in 2013. As Hart shows, Heaney found his first models for gift-giving in his rural community in Northern Ireland, the Bible, the rituals of the Catholic Church, and the literature of mystical and mythical quests. Blending careful research with evocative commentaries on the poet’s work, Seamus Heaney’s Gifts explains his ideas about the artist’s gift, the necessity of gift-exchange acts, and the moral responsibility to share one’s talents for the benefit of others.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 080718344X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 361
Book Description
“The fact of the matter,” Seamus Heaney said in a 1997 interview with the Paris Review, “is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry.” Throughout his career, Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, maintained that poetry came to him from a mysterious source like a gift of grace. He also believed that the recipient of this sort of boon had an ethical obligation to share it with others. Seamus Heaney’s Gifts, by the noted scholar and poet Henry Hart, offers the first comprehensive examination of Heaney’s preoccupation with gifts and gift-exchange. Drawing on extensive research in Heaney’s papers, as well as three decades of correspondence with the poet, Hart presents a richly detailed study of Heaney’s life and work that foregrounds the Irishman’s commitment to the vocation of poetry as a public art to be shared with audiences and readers around the world. Heaney traced his devotion to gifts back to the actual present of a Conway Stewart fountain pen that his parents gave him at the age of twelve when he left his family farm in Northern Ireland to attend a private Catholic secondary school in Londonderry. He commemorated this gift in “Digging,” the first poem in his first book, and in two poems he wrote near the end of his life: “The Conway Stewart” and “On the Gift of a Fountain Pen.” Friends and doctors had warned him that his endless globetrotting to give lectures and poetry readings had damaged his health. Yet he felt obligated to share his talent with audiences around the world until his death in 2013. As Hart shows, Heaney found his first models for gift-giving in his rural community in Northern Ireland, the Bible, the rituals of the Catholic Church, and the literature of mystical and mythical quests. Blending careful research with evocative commentaries on the poet’s work, Seamus Heaney’s Gifts explains his ideas about the artist’s gift, the necessity of gift-exchange acts, and the moral responsibility to share one’s talents for the benefit of others.