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This book provides the first overview of classical presences in Anglophone Irish poetry after 1960. Featuring detailed studies of Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, and Eavan Boland, including close readings of key poems, it highlights the evolution of Irish poetic engagements with Greece and Rome in the last sixty years. It outlines the contours of a 'movement' which has transformed Irish poetry and accompanied its transition from a postcolonial to a transnational model, from sporadic borrowings of images and myths in the poets' early attempts to define their own voices, to the multiplication of classical adaptations since the late 1980s -- at first at a time of personal and political crises, notably in Northern Ireland, and more recently, as manifestations of the poets' engagements with European and other foreign literatures.
List of contents
1. A Brief Introduction: Rationale and Objectives.- 2. The Classics in Modern Irish Poetry.- 3. Seamus Heaney: 'Lethe in Moyola'.- 4. Michael Longley: The 'Lapsed Classicist'.- 5. Derek Mahon and Eavan Boland: Marginal Perspectives.- 6. A Classical 'Revival'?.- Further Reading.
About the author
Florence Impens is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK. She has previously lived, studied, and worked in France, Ireland, and the United States. Her research interests include Irish Studies, contemporary poetry in English, and reception studies.
Summary
Invites scholars to reappraise the ways in which the dynamics of the contemporary Irish poetic scene have often been read
Places close readings of key poems within the broader context of the poets’ careers
Draws attention to lesser-known creative engagements with Greek and Latin literatures in its study of Eavan Boland and Derek Mahon
Additional text
“This monograph offers a fresh and timely look at the classical tradition – and the function of the Classics – in the work of the Irish poets … . The book’s detailed critical exegesis and firm grasp of historical, literary and classical contexts will be of great value to scholars of classical reception and contemporary Irish poetry alike, and I.’s perceptive, often original insights into several of the poems and plays make a meaningful contribution to the field.” (Laura McKenzie, The Classical Review, Vol. 69 (1), April, 2019)
Report
"This monograph offers a fresh and timely look at the classical tradition - and the function of the Classics - in the work of the Irish poets ... . The book's detailed critical exegesis and firm grasp of historical, literary and classical contexts will be of great value to scholars of classical reception and contemporary Irish poetry alike, and I.'s perceptive, often original insights into several of the poems and plays make a meaningful contribution to the field." (Laura McKenzie, The Classical Review, Vol. 69 (1), April, 2019)
