Thematically arranged and clearly structured, this book explores the seminal themes in Heaney's writing: aesthetics, politics, language, identity and myth, ethics and notions of Irishness. It takes into account all of Heaney's writings, poetry, prose and translations in order to demonstrate that these themes are coherently developed throughout his work. The detailed reading of various aspects of Heaney's prose should prove valuable to students of his poetry, proving a depth of reference to his evolving thought processes. A central strand of this study is an explanation of Heaney's ethical and political project with respect to issues of Irish identity as outlined in his writings. This work suggests that there are analogies between Heaney's political and ethical thought, and that of Jacques Derrida, Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas. Each chapter focuses on a single theme, such as: his sense of the aesthetic; his relationship with politics; his notion of place; his enunciation of a sense of visceral identity; his concept of ethics in terms of a relationship between selfhood and alterity; and his notion of the many threads which combine to produce a sense of Irishness.
Finally the Nobel lectures of Yeats and Heaney are examined in order to trace the complex relationship between these two writers.