Chapter 17 - Late Style Irish Style

Summary

This chapter discusses the concept of ‘late style’, as defined by Edward Said in his last book, in the work of recent and contemporary Irish poets Derek Mahon, Seamus Heaney, and Paul Muldoon. It explores the anachronistic and untimely as productive ways of thinking about the critical function of art in the three poets, who are all preoccupied with what means to have come ‘too late’ to history, and to poetry. The essay explores the extent to which ‘late style’ can be understood as a function of the ‘exiled’ relationship between the artist and his audience, and to what extent it is a historical consequence of late modernity.