Seamus Heaney: The Crisis of Identity

by Floyd Collins

ISBN: 0-87413-805-1          Published in 2003          $47.50          AUP Order Form

This book traces Novel laureate Seamus Heaney's development as a poet, from his first book of poetry through his most recent, Electric Light. Each chapter examines a particular phrase of Heaney's poetic career, with close, careful readings of those poems that best dramatize his crisis of identity. Collins also analyzes Heaney's continuing relationship to his literary influences, establishing the crisis of identity as a palpable reality for Yeats, Kavanagh, Joyce, and other Irish writers. This study assesses the critical reception of Heaney's works and the pressures placed on contemporary Irish poets to respond to the Troubles. It also considers his work as a translator, which has offered new voices and masks, and the sense of a native literary tradition that predates Yeats and Joyce. Collins places Heaney's work within a broader, scholarly matrix, drawing on folklore, archaeology, geography, cultural studies, psychology, and history to clarify the impact of Heaney's native culture upon his life and poetry. Floyd Collins is currently working on a book of poems about the Texas Revolution of 1836.