The death in 2013 of Seamus Heaney is an appropriate point to honour the great Irish poet's major contribution to classical reception in modern poetry. This is the first volume to be wholly dedicated to this perspective on Heaney's work, focusing primarily on his fascination with Greek drama and myth and his interest in Latin poetry.

Frontmatter List of Figures List of Contributors 1: Stephen Harrison and Fiona Macintosh: Introduction 2: Oliver Taplin: Boustrophedon between Hellas and Home 3: Neil Corcoran: Antaeus on the Move 4: Rowena Fowler: Heaney and Hesiod 5: Rosie Lavan: Mycenae Lookout' and the Example of Aeschylus 6: Lucy Pitman-Wallace: A Door into the Dark: Staging The Burial at Thebes 7: Helen Eastman: Ancient Greek Sailors with Twentieth-Century Metaphors (and Pan-Chronic Trousers): Directing Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy 8: Michael Parker: Speaking Truth to Power: Seamus Heaney's The Burial at Thebes and the Poetry of Redress 9: Marianne McDonald: Seamus Heaney: An Irish Poet Mines the Classics 10: Bernard O'Donoghue: Heaney, Yeats, and the Language of Pastoral 11: Peter McDonald: Weird Brightness' and the Riverbank: Seamus Heaney, Virgil, and the Need for Translation 12: Rachel Falconer: Heaney and Virgil's Underworld Journey 13: Kathleen Riley: The Forewarned Journey Back': Katabasis as Nostos in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney 14: Edith Hall: Paving and Pencilling: Heaney's Inscriptions in J. W. Mackail's Translation of the Aeneid 15: Stephen Harrison: Heaney as Translator: Virgil and Horace 16: Lorna Hardwick: Epilogue: Heaney's Classical Ground Endmatter Bibliography Index of Works of Seamus Heaney Cited Index of Classical Works Cited General Index

Offers the first full examination of Seamus Heaney's significant contribution to the field of classical reception Includes the first studies of his posthumous translation of Virgil's Aeneid VI (2016) Brings together a wide range of approaches to Heaney's work, by scholars of classical reception and modern literature, poets, and theatre practitioners, and encompassing both leading experts and rising scholars in their fields

Stephen Harrison is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Oxford, Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Adjunct Professor at the universities of Copenhagen and Trondheim. He has published extensively on Latin literature and its reception, including the following volumes: A Commentary on Vergil, Aeneid 10 (OUP, 1991), Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace (OUP, 2007), Living Classics: Greece and Rome in Contemporary Poetry in English (edited volume; OUP, 2009), Louis MacNeice: The Classical Radio Plays (co-edited with Amanda Wrigley; OUP, 2013), and Classics in the Modern World: A Democratic Turn? (co-edited with Lorna Hardwick; OUP, 2013). Fiona Macintosh is Professor of Classical Reception, Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD), and Fellow of St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Dying Acts: Death in Ancient Greek and Modern Irish Tragic Drama (Cork University Press, 1994), Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, 1660-1914 (with Edith Hall; OUP, 2005), and Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannus (CUP, 2009), and has also edited numerous APGRD volumes, including most recently Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century (with Justine McConnell, Stephen Harrison, and Claire Kenward; OUP, 2018) and The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (with Kathryn Bosher, Justine McConnell, and Patrice Rankine; OUP, 2015). Helen Eastman trained as a director at LAMDA after graduating from the University of Oxford, where she was the Passmore Edwards Scholar in Classics and English. She is currently an Artistic Associate at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD) at the University of Oxford, Visiting Lecturer in Contemporary Performance Practice at Westminster University, Artistic Director of Live Canon, and Senior Reader at Soho Theatre. As a freelance director of theatre and opera (and also occasionally of circus), she has worked throughout the UK at venues including Trafalgar Studios, Hackney Empire, Belfast Opera House, Glasgow Citizens Theatre, Queens Theatre, BAC, The National Theatre Studio, The De La Warr Pavilion, and Bath Theatre Royal.

Offers the first full examination of Seamus Heaney's significant contribution to the field of classical reception Includes the first studies of his posthumous translation of Virgil's Aeneid VI (2016) Brings together a wide range of approaches to Heaney's work, by scholars of classical reception and modern literature, poets, and theatre practitioners, and encompassing both leading experts and rising scholars in their fields