Seamus Heaney and the Place of Writing
, by O'Brien, Eugene- ISBN: 9780813025827 | 0813025826
- Cover: Hardcover
- Copyright: 12/1/2002
O'Brien's is the first book to trace an isolated theme in Heaney's work, in this case its creation of a politics of place, language, and identity. Unlike chronological studies of Heaney's poetry, O'Brien explores important elements in his entire oeuvre, from his poetry and prose to translations, such as the recent best-selling edition of Beowulf, that relate to the issue of writing and identity -- strident nationalism, tribal identification, political ideology, and postcolonial poetics in particular. The first sustained engagement between literary theory and the work of Heaney, the book connects the ethical projects of Heaney and Derrida in terms of their views on the relationship between self and other, and between the present and t