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 101
... past and his own necessary exploration of that past in his art . Heaney is still haunted by Janus's double gaze . More explicitly than in Door into the Dark , in Wintering Out that gaze allows us to identify the formative oppositions ...
... past and his own necessary exploration of that past in his art . Heaney is still haunted by Janus's double gaze . More explicitly than in Door into the Dark , in Wintering Out that gaze allows us to identify the formative oppositions ...
Page 105
... past becomes an equation . Rather than illuminating the dark , North " plunders the past for parallels , " thereby embracing historical determinism . David Lloyd echoes this view when he asserts North reduces history to myth , 10 and ...
... past becomes an equation . Rather than illuminating the dark , North " plunders the past for parallels , " thereby embracing historical determinism . David Lloyd echoes this view when he asserts North reduces history to myth , 10 and ...
Page 254
... past that now becomes exemplary . " Years and years go past and I do not move , " he says , “ For I see that when one man casts the other gathers / And then vice versa , without changing sides . " These lines truly have the ring of ...
... past that now becomes exemplary . " Years and years go past and I do not move , " he says , “ For I see that when one man casts the other gathers / And then vice versa , without changing sides . " These lines truly have the ring of ...
Contents
List of Abbreviations | 14 |
Door into the Dark | 39 |
Wintering Out | 68 |
Copyright | |
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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