Beowulf, an anonymous poem written in Old English, is believed to have been written sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries. It was losing favor in literary circles by the end of the twentieth century. In 2000, however, Heaney revitalized studies of the epic poem with his gritty and engaging translation. The translation, an unexpected best-seller, also caused controversy when it was awarded the Whitbread Award, one of Great Britain's top honors— normally awarded to an original work.

Heaney is not the only writer who has discussed the problems generated by colonization efforts like the one in Ireland. In 1983, the Field Day Theatre Company in Derry began publishing essays from Heaney and others, as individual pamphlets. Three of these—Terry Eagleton's "Nationalism: Irony and Commitment," Fredric Jameson's "Modernism and Imperialism," and Edward Said's "Yeats and Decolonization"—all originally published in 1988, were...