‘The Troubles' and the peace process in Northern Irelanda in Seamus Heaney’s "The cure at Troy"

Based on Philoctetes, the tragic play by Sophocles, the poet Seamus Heaney creates his own version in The Cure at Troy to present the political and social problems in Northern Ireland during the period that became known euphemistically as ‘the Troubles’. This paper aims to highlight the significance of Heaney’s play in the final years of the conflict. Heaney uses the classical Greek play to bring to light the plight and suffering of the Northern Irish people as a consequence of the atavistic and sectarian violence between the unionist and nationalist communities. Nevertheless, Heaney also provides possible answers that allow readers to harbour a certain degree of hope towards peace and the future in Northern Ireland.

Identity and the theme of belonging in Seamus Heaney's Selected Poems

The heritage and history of the ancestors and the country are important parts of the history and culture of peoples. It is the vessel which their faith, traditions, authentic values, language, ideas, and way of life derived from. It also shapes their personality by culture, national identity, and creates the bridge of communication between generations. The identity and the sense of belonging can be traced in the early poems of Seamus Heaney: Digging (1966), Gravities (1966), Traditions (1972) and Anahorish (1972). Many critics consider this as only self-revelation or as a result of feeling guilty for leaving his family, land, and career. This study aims at proving that in spite of the fact that Heaney had left his place of birth and his parent’s tradition for choosing to be a writer, he presented poems that carry out the continuity of searching for the past and roots. The study concludes with that the sense of belonging has appeared through Heaneys early poems, reflecting his desire to plant the spirit of devotion to family, tradition, and Ireland.

Dethroning Dante: Skopostheorie in Action

<p>Dante’s Commedia has been translated into English more than one hundred times. As a result, there are plenty of opposing opinions on how best to translate Dante’s masterwork. One can mimic Dante’s rhyme scheme (terza rima), utilize a more conventional English metre or rhyme scheme, or resort to a prose translation that abandons any attempt to reproduce Dante’s poetics. It is the purpose of this study to demonstrate that all of these are, in the right context, appropriate translation strategies; no platonic ideal translation strategy exists. To provide a more tolerant approach to translations of Dante’s poetry, I employ a translation theory called Skopostheorie (skopos theory). This theory argues that each translation has its own unique purpose (skopos); there are any number of (valid) strategies available to the translator. This theory is often seen as extreme, providing the translator with too much freedom to manipulate the text. Accordingly, this thesis first makes a case for the application of Skopostheorie in literary translation, attempting to defend it against its critics. Second, this essay exhibits how the theory may be applied in practice. To demonstrate its application, I look at three very different English translations of the first canto of Dante’s Inferno published during the 1990s. These translations are by Seamus Heaney (1993), Steve Ellis (1994), and Robert M. Durling (1996). In doing so, I hope to identify the various approaches of these translators, to demonstrate the breadth of options available to translators of Dante’s capolavoro, and to add to the discourse on the reception of Dante in the English-speaking world.</p>

Dethroning Dante: Skopostheorie in Action

<p>Dante’s Commedia has been translated into English more than one hundred times. As a result, there are plenty of opposing opinions on how best to translate Dante’s masterwork. One can mimic Dante’s rhyme scheme (terza rima), utilize a more conventional English metre or rhyme scheme, or resort to a prose translation that abandons any attempt to reproduce Dante’s poetics. It is the purpose of this study to demonstrate that all of these are, in the right context, appropriate translation strategies; no platonic ideal translation strategy exists. To provide a more tolerant approach to translations of Dante’s poetry, I employ a translation theory called Skopostheorie (skopos theory). This theory argues that each translation has its own unique purpose (skopos); there are any number of (valid) strategies available to the translator. This theory is often seen as extreme, providing the translator with too much freedom to manipulate the text. Accordingly, this thesis first makes a case for the application of Skopostheorie in literary translation, attempting to defend it against its critics. Second, this essay exhibits how the theory may be applied in practice. To demonstrate its application, I look at three very different English translations of the first canto of Dante’s Inferno published during the 1990s. These translations are by Seamus Heaney (1993), Steve Ellis (1994), and Robert M. Durling (1996). In doing so, I hope to identify the various approaches of these translators, to demonstrate the breadth of options available to translators of Dante’s capolavoro, and to add to the discourse on the reception of Dante in the English-speaking world.</p>

Human Rights, Posthuman Ethics, and the Material Aesthetics of Flight in Contemporary Irish Poetry

This article examines a series of poems by Irish authors, and focuses on their engagement with human rights violations and conflicts through the metaphors and imagery of flight and the aerial view. It argues that these poems address the need for a shift away from the perspective of a defined, distinct human subject, and towards a posthumanist framework which emphasizes relational, situated, and embodied ethics and aesthetics in an interconnected world. Since the introduction of modern aviation, Irish poets have frequently employed the imagery of flying to consider poetry's role in relation to conflict and crisis. Here, the adoption of visual and material metaphors of flight and aerial travel in human rights contexts is discussed, particularly in poems by Seamus Heaney, Peter Sirr and Justin Quinn. Through a reimagined poetics of flight, these poets question established dichotomies between proximity and distance, and material embodiment and disembodied abstraction.

Element of Irishness in Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Digging’

Seamus Heaney is considered one of the greatest poets of the postmodern era, his name and fame travelled across the Irish borders by winning the 1995 Nobel Prize in literature. Seamus Heaney was born in Ireland; he was the only child in his family to attend the school, His family members were traditional potato farmers. Seamus Heaney broke his family tradition of farming by choosing to become a writer. While growing up to become a first graduate among his family Seamus Heaney’s mind was captured by this sense of gloom that he was unable to follow his family tradition of farming. Seamus Heaney promises himself that he will pay rich tribute and let the world know about the hardships of Irish farming life. Seamus Heaney’s main concern for writing poetry was to keep alive Irish culture and its heritage alive. Since Ireland was under the colonial rule of England and Seamus Heaney was of the view that colonization is not only a political problem, but it destroys the country's culture and identity. This was the main reason that Heaney’s poetry revolves around Irishness, its people and culture. There is an enormous reflection of Irish identity and culture in his poetry. This paper will focus on elements of Irishness in Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Digging’.

Farming in Modern Irish Literature

This innovative study analyzes the range of representation of farming in Irish literature in the period since independence/partition in 1922, as Ireland moved from a largely agricultural to a developed urban society. In many different forms, poetry, drama, fiction, and autobiography, writers have made literary capital by looking back at their rural backgrounds, even where those may be a generation back. The first five chapters examine some of the key themes: the impact of inheritance on family, in the patriarchal system where there could only be one male heir; the struggles for survival in the poorest regions of the West of Ireland; the uses of childhood farming memories whether idyllic or traumatic; the representation of communities, challenging the homogeneous idealizing images of the Literary Revival; the impact of modernization on successive generations into the twenty-first century. The final three chapters are devoted to three major writers in whose work farming is central: Patrick Kavanagh, the small farmer who had to find an individual voice to express his own unique experience; John McGahern in whose fiction the life of the farm is always posited as alternative to an arid and rootless urban milieu; Seamus Heaney who re-imagined his farming childhood in so many different modes throughout his career.