Seamus Heaney and the Classics

Bann Valley Muses

Edited by Stephen Harrison, Fiona Macintosh, and Helen Eastman

Offers the first full examination of Seamus Heaney's significant contribution to the field of classical reception
Includes the first studies of his posthumous translation of Virgil's Aeneid VI (2016)
Brings together a wide range of approaches to Heaney's work, by scholars of classical reception and modern literature, poets, and theatre practitioners, and encompassing both leading experts and rising scholars in their fields

Seamus Heaney and the Classics

Bann Valley Muses

Edited by Stephen Harrison, Fiona Macintosh, and Helen Eastman

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.

Seamus Heaney and the Classics

Bann Valley Muses

Edited by Stephen Harrison, Fiona Macintosh, and Helen Eastman

Frontmatter
List of Figures
List of Contributors
1:Introduction, Stephen Harrison and Fiona Macintosh
2:Boustrophedon between Hellas and Home, Oliver Taplin
3:Antaeus on the Move, Neil Corcoran
4:Heaney and Hesiod, Rowena Fowler
5:Mycenae Lookout' and the Example of Aeschylus, Rosie Lavan
6:A Door into the Dark: Staging The Burial at Thebes, Lucy Pitman-Wallace
7:Ancient Greek Sailors with Twentieth-Century Metaphors (and Pan-Chronic Trousers): Directing Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy, Helen Eastman
8:Speaking Truth to Power: Seamus Heaney's The Burial at Thebes and the Poetry of Redress, Michael Parker
9:Seamus Heaney: An Irish Poet Mines the Classics, Marianne McDonald
10:Heaney, Yeats, and the Language of Pastoral, Bernard O'Donoghue
11:Weird Brightness' and the Riverbank: Seamus Heaney, Virgil, and the Need for Translation, Peter McDonald
12:Heaney and Virgil's Underworld Journey, Rachel Falconer
13:The Forewarned Journey Back': Katabasis as Nostos in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney, Kathleen Riley
14:Paving and Pencilling: Heaney's Inscriptions in J. W. Mackail's Translation of the Aeneid, Edith Hall
15:Heaney as Translator: Virgil and Horace, Stephen Harrison
16:Epilogue: Heaney's Classical Ground, Lorna Hardwick
Endmatter
Bibliography
Index of Works of Seamus Heaney Cited
Index of Classical Works Cited
General Index

Seamus Heaney and the Classics

Bann Valley Muses

Edited by Stephen Harrison, Fiona Macintosh, and Helen Eastman

Author Information

Edited by Stephen Harrison, Professor of Latin Literature and Fellow and Tutor in Classics, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, Fiona Macintosh, Professor of Classical Reception, Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD), and Fellow of St Hilda's College, University of Oxford, and Helen Eastman, Freelance director of theatre and opera and Artistic Associate at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD), University of Oxford

Stephen Harrison is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Oxford, Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Adjunct Professor at the universities of Copenhagen and Trondheim. He has published extensively on Latin literature and its reception, including the following volumes: A Commentary on Vergil, Aeneid 10 (OUP, 1991), Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace (OUP, 2007), Living Classics: Greece and Rome in Contemporary Poetry in English (edited volume; OUP, 2009), Louis MacNeice: The Classical Radio Plays (co-edited with Amanda Wrigley; OUP, 2013), and Classics in the Modern World: A Democratic Turn? (co-edited with Lorna Hardwick; OUP, 2013).

Fiona Macintosh is Professor of Classical Reception, Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD), and Fellow of St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Dying Acts: Death in Ancient Greek and Modern Irish Tragic Drama (Cork University Press, 1994), Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, 1660-1914 (with Edith Hall; OUP, 2005), and Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannus (CUP, 2009), and has also edited numerous APGRD volumes, including most recently Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century (with Justine McConnell, Stephen Harrison, and Claire Kenward; OUP, 2018) and The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (with Kathryn Bosher, Justine McConnell, and Patrice Rankine; OUP, 2015).

Helen Eastman trained as a director at LAMDA after graduating from the University of Oxford, where she was the Passmore Edwards Scholar in Classics and English. She is currently an Artistic Associate at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD) at the University of Oxford, Visiting Lecturer in Contemporary Performance Practice at Westminster University, Artistic Director of Live Canon, and Senior Reader at Soho Theatre. As a freelance director of theatre and opera (and also occasionally of circus), she has worked throughout the UK at venues including Trafalgar Studios, Hackney Empire, Belfast Opera House, Glasgow Citizens Theatre, Queens Theatre, BAC, The National Theatre Studio, The De La Warr Pavilion, and Bath Theatre Royal.

Contributors:

Neil Corcoran, Honorary Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Liverpool

Helen Eastman, freelance director of theatre and opera

Rachel Falconer, Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Lausanne

Rowena Fowler, independent scholar

Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at Kings College London

Lorna Hardwick, Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at the Open University

Stephen Harrison, Professor of Latin Literature and Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford

Rosie Lavan, Assistant Professor in Irish Writing at Trinity College Dublin

Fiona Macintosh, Professor of Classical Reception , Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD), and Fellow of St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford

Marianne McDonald MRIA, Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Classics at the University of California, San Diego

Peter McDonald, Professor of English at the University of Oxford

Bernard O'Donoghue, Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford

Michael Parker, Literature tutor at the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford and Visiting Professor at Oxford Brookes University.

Lucy Pitman-Wallace, freelance theatre director

Kathleen Riley, independent scholar and writer

Oliver Taplin FBA, Professor Emeritus of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford

Seamus Heaney and the Classics

Bann Valley Muses

Edited by Stephen Harrison, Fiona Macintosh, and Helen Eastman

Reviews and Awards

"... the essays in this collection offer the reader a comprehensive introduction to the massive ... influence that classical literature had on Heaney, both as a translator and a poet." - Sidney Burris, The Classical Review

"In all, this volume is rich in detail and methodological approaches, highly recommended for readers of Heaney and of the Classics." - Will Desmond, Maynooth University