This New Casebook on Seamus Heaney follows the astonishingly rapid growth of a literary reputation. Using reviews as well as extended academic essays, it presents a debate to which the poet himself has made influential critical contributions and which changes direction with the publication of each new book of poems. In particular, the Casebook shows how a wide range of contemporary theoretical approaches have been brought into play as Heaney has become increasingly central for general readers of poetry, academics and students at school and university.