It's unlikely to be news to the general reader that Seamus Heaney is a distinguished translator of medieval poetry, for subsequent to its publication in 1999, Heaney's translation of the Old English poem Beowulf provoked extensive comment, garnered substantial sales, and won the Whitbread Prize. Important as the Beowulf translation is, however, it is not the full extent of Heaney's engagement with medieval poetry. In 1983, Heaney published a translation of the medieval Irish Buile Suibhne, and he has held an extensive dialogue with Dante's Commedia involving translation, adaptation, and allusion across three books in particular: Field Work, Station Island, and Seeing Things. Further to that, the Beowulf translation is not Heaney's most recent translation of a major work of medieval literature, for it has been followed by a modern English translation of Robert Henryson's Middle Scots text, The Testament of Cresseid. Heaney's translations and adaptations of medieval poetry, then, form a substantial body of work, drawn from across the medieval period and from a number of languages (Irish, Italian, Old English, Middle Scots), extending through much of his career.

These translations of medieval material are not the full extent of Heaney's translation work, of course, for Heaney's translations now make for a considerable list, and that list covers a number of categories: as well as medieval poetry, he has made translations from classical material, from Eastern European poetry, and from post-medieval poetry in Irish and Scots Gaelic.