Abstract
ABSTRACT Critics have often acknowledged Dante’s influence on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. During the conflict in Northern Ireland, Dante’s political and linguistic thinking showed Heaney a way of cultural reconciliation between the British and Gaelic traditions. From the early 1970s to the late 1990s, political (dis)harmony, linguistic unity, faith and poetics are some of his major themes, often explored through the reworking of passages from the Commedia. After the end of the Troubles in 1998, Dante’s poetry may have taken on a new significance for the Irish author. This article therefore aims to explore Dantean intertextuality in Heaney’s first peacetime collection, Electric Light (2001). Through the revival of settings, themes and motifs (particularly in the remake of ‘Guido, i’ vorrei’), Dante’s presence seems to act as an analytical lens that shapes the poetic self, filters his literary experience, and redefines descriptive imagery.
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