Search results for ""Author Seamus Heaney""

The greatest of the late medieval Scottish makars, Robert Henryson wrote in Lowland Scots, a distinctive northern version of English. He was profoundly influenced by Chaucer's vision of the frailty and pathos of human life. His greatest poem, and one of the rhetorical masterpieces of the literature of these islands, is the narrative Testament of Cresseid, set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, which completes the story of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, offering a grim and tragic account of its faithless heroine's rejection by her lover Diomede, and her decline into prostitution and leprosy. A work of unreconciled Shakespearean intensity, the Testament has been translated by Seamus Heaney into a confident and yet faithful modern English idiom which honours the poem's unique blend of detachment and compassion.A master of narrative, Henryson was also a comic master of the verse fable; his burlesques of human weakness in the guise of animal wisdom are traced with delicate comedy and irony. Seven of the Fables are here sparklingly translated; their burlesque freshness rendered to the last claw and feather. Seven Fables and The Testament of Cresseid is an extraordinarily rich and wide-ranging encounter between two poets across six centuries.

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In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.Earth has not anything to show more fair:Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty . . .-- Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,September 3, 1802

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As part of its 375th celebrations, the University has created a new photo book, Explore Harvard: The Yard and Beyond. This collection of photographs brings to life the myriad intellectual exchanges that make Harvard one of the world’s leading institutions of higher education. Presenting contemporary images never before published as well as archival prints, this large-format portrait of the University captures an early spirit of exploration that continues to thrive around the Yard, in the historic lecture halls, in cutting-edge science facilities, and in research outposts around the world. From “move-in” day to Commencement, seasonal shifts across the iconic New England landscape form a contemplative backdrop to learning and growth for each new class that enters here. For alumni who remember life in the houses along the Charles, or thrilled to the achievements of athletes and artists, Explore Harvard will not disappoint. Prospective students who have seen the University only from a distance will get an inside view of one of the most beautiful campuses in the world, while those intimately familiar with the school will discover a side of Harvard they never knew.

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W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) was not only Ireland's greatest poet but one of the most influential voices in world literature in the twentieth century. His extraordinary work, in the words of this volume's editor Seamus Heaney, encourages us 'to be more resolutely and abundantly alive, whatever the conditions.'Other volumes in this series: Auden, Betjemen, Eliot, Hughes and Plath

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Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf ?is the elegiac narrative of the Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. Drawn to what he has called the "four-squareness of the utterance" in ?Beowulf ?and its immense emotional credibility Seamus Heaney gives the great epic convincing reality But how to visualize the poet's story has always been a challenge for modern-day readers. In Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition, John D. Niles, a specialist in Old English literature, provides visual counterparts to Heaney's remarkable translation. More than one hundred full-page illustrations—Viking warships, chain mail, lyres, spearheads, even a reconstruction of the Great Hall—make visible Beowulf's world and the elemental themes of his story: death, divine power, horror, heroism, disgrace, devotion, and fame. This mysterious world is now transformed into one of material splendor as readers view its elegant goblets, dragon images, and finely crafted gold jewelry against the backdrop of the Danish landscape of its origins.

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'A huge book, an immense book. Such adventure and variety, such industry, such subjugation of self.' Michael Hofmann, TLSHeaney not only translated classic works of Latin and Old English but also poems from a great number of ancient and modern European languages, not least translations from the Old, Middle and Modern Irish of his homeland. The breadth and depth in evidence here is extraordinary - from monastic hymns and prayers, to the civic and familial tragedies of Sophocles and Kochanowski; from Virgil and Dante's living underworld to the stark landscapes of Sweeney's Ireland. As editor, Marco Songzogni frames the translations with the poet's own writings on his works. Collectively these bring us closer to an understanding of the genius for interpretation and transformation that distinguished Heaney as one of the great poet-translators of all time.'The Translations . . . is a landmark volume, a striking testament to the particular and generous genius of Seamus Heaney. . . The crucial part played by translation in the formation and development of his extraordinary talent is under the spotlight as readers are further gifted with Marco Sonzogni's meticulously detailed notes. . ..' Martina Evans, Irish Times'.this volume is handsome testimony to Heaney's lifelong service to a noble art.' David Wheatley, Guardian'This magnificent book. . . is without a doubt a compendium to be cherished, and to be celebrated.' Paul Perry, Sunday Independent

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Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf (1999) was hailed as a masterpiece, alerting readers to his extraordinary ability to tune into other poets and languages and render their work fresh and alive in his own voice. In fact, as this volume attests, from the very beginning translation informed over fifty years of Heaney's critical and creative output, to which the posthumous publication of his translation of Virgil's Aeneid Book VI (2016) - also widely acclaimed - made a fitting epilogue.Heaney not only translated classic works of Latin and Old English but also a great number of poems from Spanish, Romanian, Dutch, Russian, German, Scottish Gaelic, Czech, classical and modern Greek, modern and Middle French, medieval and modern Italian, and more. He was drawn in particular to the language of his homeland, a preoccupation that runs through this volume in those translations from Old, Middle and modern Irish. As he said: 'If you lived in the Irish countryside as I did in my childhood, you lived in a primal Gaeltacht.'The breadth and depth in evidence here is extraordinary: from the stark landscapes of Sweeney's Ireland to Virgil and Dante's living underworlds, from monastic hymns and prayers to the civic and familial tragedies of Sophocles and Kochanowski.As editor, Marco Sonzogni frames the translations with the poet's own writings on his works, drawing from various introductions, interviews and commentaries. Collectively we are brought closer to an understanding of the remarkable extent of Heaney's talent, a genius for interpretation and transformation that distinguish him as one of the great poet-translators of all time.

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In his latest book of essays Karl Miller turns his attention to appreciate certain writers of the English-speaking modern world. A new ruralism has come to notice in this country, and the book is drawn to country lives as they have figured in the literature of the last century. An introductory essay is centred on the Anglo-Welsh borderlands. Journeys taken with Seamus Heaney and Andrew O'Hagan to this countryside, and others, are threaded throughout the book. The poets Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes are discussed, together with the fiction of Ian McEwan, the Canadian writer Alistair Macleod, the Irish writer John McGahern and the Baltimorean Anne Tyler. Scotland is a preoccupation of the later pieces, including the letters of Henry Cockburn, a lifelong interest of the author, who is also interested here in foxes and their current metropolitan profile.

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Encompassing a wide range of voices-from weary sailors to forlorn wives, from heroic saints to drunken louts, from farmers hoping to improve their fields to sermonizers looking to save your soul—the 123 poems collected in The Word Exchange complement the portrait of medieval England that emerges from Beowulf, the most famous Anglo-Saxon poem of all. Offered here are tales of battle, travel, and adventure, but also songs of heartache and longing, pearls of lusty innuendo and clear-eyed stoicism, charms and spells for everyday use, and seven "hoards" of delightfully puzzling riddles. Featuring all-new translations by seventy-four of our most celebrated poets—including Seamus Heaney, Robert Pinsky, Billy Collins, Eavan Boland, Paul Muldoon, Robert Hass, Gary Soto, Jane Hirshfield, David Ferry, Molly Peacock, Yusef Komunyakaa, Richard Wilbur, and many others—The Word Exchange is a landmark work of translation, as fascinating and multivocal as the original literature it translates.

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