Biography

Buttel, Robert. Seamus Heaney. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 88 p.

Biographical and critical study of Heaney.

Corcoran, Neil. Seamus Heaney. London: Faber and Faber, 1986, 192 p.

Provides a biographical and critical overview. Corcoran includes a select bibliography.

Quinlan, Kieran. 'Tracing Seamus Heaney." World Literature Today 69, No. 1 (Winter 1995): 63-8.

Overviews the poet's life and verse, emphasizing the political nature of both.

Criticism

Andrews, Elmer. "The Gift and the Craft: An Approach to the Poetry of Seamus Heaney." Twentieth Century Literature XXI, No. 4 (Winter 1985): 368-79.

Determines the influence of Patrick Kavanaugh and William Wordsworth on Heaney's work.

Balakian, Peter. "Seamus Heaney's New Landscapes." The Literary Review XXXI, No. 4 (Summer 1988): 501-5.

Praises Heaney's use of sensuous language and of Irish landscape and culture.

Beaver, Harold. "Seamus Heaney: Prospero or Ariel?" Parnassus XVI, No. 1 (1990): 104-13.

Juxtaposes the tone and themes of Heaney's poetry against his essays.

Brown, Duncan. "Seamus Heaney's 'Book of Changes': The Haw Lantern." Theoria LXXIV (October 1989): 79-96.

Marks the volume as a significant development in the poet's career, noting the influence of Mandelstam, Blake, Wilbur, and Zbigniew Herbert on Heaney's style and themes.

Burris, Sidney. The Poetry of Resistance: Seamus Heaney and the Pastoral Tradition. Athens: Ohio University Press, 165 p.

Analyzes the pastoral elements of Heaney's work and places his poetry within the context of the pastoral tradition.

Hart, Henry. Seamus Heaney: Poet of Contrary Progressions. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992, 219 p.

Collection of critical essays by Hart, including his prizewinning essays "The Anxiety of Trust," and "Seamus Heaney's Poetry of Meditation: Door into the Dark."

Hunter, Jefferson. "The Borderline of Poetry." Virginia Quarterly Review 68, No. 4 (Autumn 1992): 801-08.

Positive review of Seeing Things and The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes, modernized for the Irish theater in 1990.

Kinzie, Mary. "Deeper than Declared: On Seamus Heaney." Salmagundi No. 80 (Fall 1980): 22-57.

Offers a thematic study of Poems 1965-75, focusing on the verse written after North.

Lloyd, David. "The Two Voices of Seamus Heaney's North." Ariel X, No. 4 (October 1979): 5-13.

Examines the disparity between the voices of Part I and Part II of North.

Longley, Edna. '"Inner Emigré' or 'Artful Voyeur'? Seamus Heaney's North" In Poetry in the Wars, pp. 140-69. Newcastle upon Tyne, Eng.: Bloodaxe Books, 1986.

Lauds North as Heaney's best poetry to date and his most politically significant.

McGuirk, Kevin. "Questions, Apostrophes, and the Politics of Seamus Heaney's Field Work." Ariel XXV, No. 3 (July 1994): 67-81.

Analyzes Field Work in the wake of violence in Belfast in 1969.

McLoughlin, Deborah. "'An Ear to the Line': Modes of Receptivity in Seamus Heaney's 'Glanmore Sonnets'." Papers on Language and Literature XXV, No. 2 (Spring 1989): 201-15.

Discusses thematic and stylistic aspects of the sonnets in Field Work.

Macrae, Alasdair. "Seamus Heaney's New Voice in Station Island" In Irish Writers and Society at Large, edited by Masaru Sekine, pp. 122-38. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1985.

Views Station Island in light of the relationship of the modern poet to his or her society.

Moldaw, Carol. "A Poetic Conscience." Partisan Review LXn, No. 1 (Winter 1995): 144-48.

Reviews Selected Poems and Seeing Things, noting the "geological shift" which occurs in Heaney's poetry.

Molino, Michael R. "Flying by the Nets of Language and Nationality: Seamus Heaney, the 'English' Language, and Ulster's Troubles." Modern Philology 91, No. 2 (November 1993): 180-201.

Explores Heaney's polyphonic, Anglo-Irish voice in Wintering Out as the poet speaks of the political events in Northern Ireland.

Owens, Colin. "Heaney's 'Polder.'" The Explicator 52, No. 3 (Spring 1994): 183-85.

Interprets Heaney's "Polder" as a love poem.

Sandy, Stephen. "Seeing Things: The Visionary Ardor of Seamus Heaney." Salmagundi No. 100 (Fall 1993): 207-25.

Perceives Seeing Things as the introspective, meditative testimony to Heaney's Northern Irish heritage.

Tapscott, Stephen. "Poetry and Trouble: Seamus Heaney's Irish Purgatorio" Southwest Review 71, No. 4 (Autumn 1986): 519-35.

Places Heaney and his contemporaries among their Anglo-Irish models, Yeats and Joyce, finding Heaney aligned with the former's historicism and the latter's Catholicism.

Watt, R.J.C. "Seamus Heaney: Voices on Helicon." Essays in Criticism XLIV, No. 3 (July 1994): 213-34.

Maintains that Heaney's voice is as divided as his Northern Ireland community.

Additional coverage of Heaney's life and career is contained in the following sources published by Gale Research: Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vols. 5, 7,14, 25, 37, 74, 91; Discovering Authors: British; Contemporary Authors, Vols. 85-88; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vols. 25, 48; Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography 1960 to Present; Discovering Authors: Poets Module; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 40; Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook, Vol. 95; and Major Twentieth-Century Writers.