SOURCE: Quinlan, Kieran. “Tracing Seamus Heaney.” World Literature Today 69, no. 1 (winter 1995): 63-8.

In the following essay, Quinlan examines Heaney's background as a Catholic native of Northern Ireland, outlining how changes in his life and philosophies affected his poetry.

In 1989, when Seamus Heaney accepted his election as Professor of Poetry at Oxford University (a rather odd position, its occupant chosen in a peculiarly odd manner by the “populist” vote of those M.A.'s of the University caring to participate, and then merely required to deliver a modest number of lectures over the course of his tenure), it seemed to many that he had come a very long way indeed from his roots in a rural, relatively unlettered, and distinctly Catholic Northern Ireland. Was this an achievement, then, of which his countrymen should be proud (though the professorship itself had been held mainly by those whose names, as James...