Translating Tragedy: Seamus Heaney’s Sophoclean Plays

Abstract

The interest of contemporary Irish authors in the Greek and Roman antiquity testifies to their renewed effort in appropriating the classical tradition both as a source of inspiration and as a means of redefining the nature of Irishness through a constant confrontation with Otherness. Translation and adaptation are among the favoured approaches to the ancient texts, whichoftenbecome metaphors for the Irish political situation. My paper analyses Seamus Heaney’s challenge to the established canon by his creative use of the classical tradition in The Cure at Troy (1990) and The Burial at Thebes (2004), adapted from Sophocles’s Philoctetes and Antigone. My aim is to illustrate the relationship between Heaney’s translation practices and his role as a poet.