Honors College Theses

Publication Date

2026

Major

English (B.A.)

Release Option

Open Access

Faculty Mentor

Dr. Joe Pellegrino

Abstract

This study examines the use of early medieval structure and language in the poetry of Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill, focusing on their near-contemporary collections, North and Mercian Hymns. Both collections use etymological and poetic structures to fashion an imagined medieval past in order to discuss personal and cultural narratives of history. Leveraging these structures in poetry and digging them out of past strata like a material artifact, Heaney and Hill collapse linear systems of time and language and access past word forms even as they evolve. This archaeological approach to poetry gives them the means to place the medieval directly in conversation with the present. As Heaney writes in the poem “Belderg,” language exists as a “persistence, / A congruence of lives.” Former meanings of words—the expression of past cultures—are still present in contemporary English and can be reinstated through careful usage. Both Heaney and Hill use past tradition to imbue their work with the weight of history. Focusing on the strong Old English borrowings present in both authors, this project reveals the debt to which modern poetry owes to early forms of English: its reified and reinterpreted remains placed in a new framework in the twentieth century.

Download

Share

COinS