Heaney and the Classics | Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again

While Heaney’s poetry tended to be rooted in the sense of place, identity, and memory, the classics were intertwined in much of his most celebrated works as a poet and literary translator. In his treatment of the classics, Heaney treated ancient texts as a guide for us to locate ourselves in cultural and geographical space.

The talk will examine Heaney’s literary translations of the ancient Greek playwright, Sophocles, and the Roman Poet, Virgil. Heaney reminds us that tragedy, the breakdown of the moral order, and memory has been part of the human condition for millennia.