The Achievement of Seamus Heaney

The Nobel Prize for Literature has drawn unprecedented attention to the poetry and prose of Seamus Heaney, who now takes his place alongside Dante and Yeats. Yet in spite of his international reputation, some still see Heaney as an earthbound, pastoral poet inspired by nostalgia. The Achievement of Seamus Heaney, by the eminent critic John Wilson Foster, emphasizes the high seriousness and integrity of Heaney's verse and prose, embedding itself deeply in the literary history and culture not only