Reading Seamus Heaney's Aeneid Book VI

Keeping in Step
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-0-19-897363-8
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 384 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

In this study of Seamus Heaney's Aeneid Book VI, nineteen specialists in Latin literature and modern poetry in English assemble to close-read Heaney's remarkable rendering of Virgil's Aeneid VI, which recounts the Trojan hero Aeneas' descent into the underworld and return. In a translation that discovers fresh resonances and parallels between Virgil's poetry and the island of Ireland, and between Roman and modern times, we gain new perspectives on Virgil's familiar katabatic motifs such as plucking the golden bough, crossing the Styx on Charon's barge, encountering the souls of the dead—Palinurus, Dido, Anchises, and more, glimpsing a vision of future Rome, learning the fate of souls in the afterlife, and returning via the gates of Sleep. With each chapter focusing on some 50 lines of Heaney's translation, we demonstrate how Heaney's 'settlement' with Virgil leads him to meditate richly on the importance of funerals and burial rites in Irish culture, the experience of living between different cultures and languages, the relation between fathers and sons, the enduring legacy of the Troubles, and the ongoing work of describing and affirming a stance through translation. Heaney's translation of Aeneid VI can be seen as a key to his major preoccupations concerning a poet's relation to his home ground, his literary predecessors, and his particular historical moment.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Falconer, Rachel

Harrison, Stephen

Nelis, Damien

Über Autor(innen)

Rachel Falconer is Professor and Chair of Modern English Literature at the University of Lausanne. Prior to this, she taught at the Charles University, Prague for two years, then at the University of Sheffield for seventeen years. Her research interests in English literature span a range of historical contexts (particularly the 17th century, and 20-21st centuries) and literary genres (poetry, epic, fantasy, fiction) and approaches including memory studies, the katabatic tradition, and the reception of Virgil and Dante.

Stephen Harrison is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Oxford and Senior Research Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was the Latin tutor from 1987–2020. His research interests lie in Augustan Latin poetry, especially Vergil and Horace, the Roman novel, especially Apuleius, and their reception in later literatures, from early modern Neo-Latin to the contemporary world.

Damien Nelis is Professor of Latin (emeritus) at the University of Geneva. His research interests lie in Hellenistic poetry, Latin poetry, the study of the emotions, and the epic tradition. He is writing a book on Vergil's Georgics.