Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus HeaneyNobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, author of nine collections of poetry and three volumes of influential essays, is regarded by many as the greatest Irish poet since Yeats. Passage to the Center is the most comprehensive critical treatment to date on Heaney's poetry and the first to study Heaney's entire body of work. It is also the first to examine the poems from the perspective of religion, one of Heaney's guiding preoccupations. According to Daniel Tobin, the growth of Heaney's poetry may be charted through the recurrent figure of "the center", a key image in the relationship that evolved over time between the poet and his inherited place, an evolution that involved the continual re-evaluation and re-vision of imaginative boundaries. |
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Page 5
... believe that the condition into which I was born and into which my generation in Ireland was born involved the moment of tran- sition from sacred to profane . Other peoples , other cultures , had to go through it earlier - the ...
... believe that the condition into which I was born and into which my generation in Ireland was born involved the moment of tran- sition from sacred to profane . Other peoples , other cultures , had to go through it earlier - the ...
Page 123
... believe will preserve what is most truly their own . When such effacement takes hold , a sacrificial crisis has developed that can only be diffused through a new manifestation of the sacred , that is , of transcendental violence . For ...
... believe will preserve what is most truly their own . When such effacement takes hold , a sacrificial crisis has developed that can only be diffused through a new manifestation of the sacred , that is , of transcendental violence . For ...
Page 132
... believe that poetry is its own special action and that having its own mode of consciousness , its own mode of reality , has its own efficacy gradually . " 75 That special action makes North an apocalyptic work in the root meaning of the ...
... believe that poetry is its own special action and that having its own mode of consciousness , its own mode of reality , has its own efficacy gradually . " 75 That special action makes North an apocalyptic work in the root meaning of the ...
Contents
List of Abbreviations | 14 |
Door into the Dark | 39 |
Wintering Out | 68 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
affirms allegory allusion artistic becomes brutal called consciousness Corcoran creation cultural cycle Dante's dark death displacement door early poems echoes emblem embody empty source envisions eternal return explore feminine Field figure finds forces Francis Ledwidge Grauballe ground Haw Lantern Heaney's early Heaney's imagination Heaney's poem Heaney's poetry Heaney's quest Heaney's sense human Ibid idea ideal identity immanence Interview Ireland Irish Irish language journey language liminal lines Lough Lough Beg Lough Neagh masculine memory metaphor Mircea Eliade myth mythic nature Nerthus North Northern Ireland numinous observes omphalos once origins parable paradox poem's poet poet's poetic political Potato Digging primal quest for self-definition reality relationship religious reveals rhythms ritual roots sacred center Seamus Heaney sectarian sense of place shape sonnet space Spirit Level Station Island suggests Sweeney symbol T.S. Eliot things tion Tollund trans transcendence transfigured transformed tribal violence vision voice words Yeats Yeats's