The Affordances of Seamus Heaney’s Lyric

This thesis examines aspects of the lyric practice of the poet Seamus Heaney. The thesis utilises the work of the new formalist scholar Caroline Levine to theorise Heaney's engagements with literary form, the lyric genre, and society. Each chapter offers a case study of Heaney's uses of the formal potentialities of the lyric genre in the context of his poetry's engagement with a primary theme, including family, violence, marriage, forms of religious experience, and aging. The thesis thereby presents a view of the lyric as a provisional form of knowing, or means of generating knowledge, with a political value.