A Comparative Analysis of 'Digging' and 'Follower' by Seamus Heaney

... Coursework Assignment: Poetry Post 1914 A Comparative Analysis of 'Digging' and 'Follower' by Seamus Heaney In considering these two poems, it is important to recognise their context within Irish literature and the history of the country. Many critics, including Robert Lowell, deem Seamus Heaney to be 'the most important Irish poet since Yeats'. The Northern Ireland disputes between the Catholics and Protestants have often inspired Irish literature. William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney were both awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for work derived from their experience of the struggles. Yeats believed his poems and plays could 'engender a national unity capable of transfiguring the Irish nation' often through themes deeply rooted in Irish history and mythology. Heaney also had great interest in the conflicts, and felt himself to be 'symbolically placed' deep in the cultural divide, since his birth in 1939. He spent his childhood as the eldest in a strongly

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