Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the effectiveness of Heaney's language in the light of his view of poetry, and chronologically shows the changes in that language and Heaney's commentary on it through the quarter-century from Death of a Naturalist in 1966 to Seeing Things in 1991. It demonstrates two things –the language of Heaney's poetry and the expressly linguistic terms in which he discusses it –have changed throughout his career in a series of deliberate and signalled choices. The book looks at that claims for transparency in various linguistic areas, particularly in metrical forms, phonology, vocabulary and grammar. It examines The Government of the Tongue, Heaney's ars poetica which outlines his theory of lyric poetry and its forms, especially in relation to two dominating authorities, Dante and Mandelstam.