SOURCE: "Heaney and the Pastoral Persuasion," in The Poetry of Resistance: Seamus Heaney and the Pastoral Persuasion, Ohio University Press, 1990, pp. 1-34.

In the following excerpt, Burris places Heaney's poetry within the context of pastoral tradition.

Abducted by Hades and spirited away to the underworld, Persephone ate several seeds from a pomegranate, the fruit traditionally associated with marriage and fertility cults. The price of her impudence was her freedom. Ingestion of the fruit sealed the marital alliance, and Demeter, Persephone's mother and one of the oldest, most powerful goddesses of the Greek pantheon, lost her daughter to an infernal son-in-law. With Zeus as her advocate, however, Demeter struck a deal with Hades, and Persephone was allowed to live with her mother for the better part of each year. During this time, the crops flourished. But when Persephone returned to the underworld to spend the remaining months with her...