Throughout this monograph I have argued that for a comprehensive appreciation of Paul Muldoon and Medbh McGuckian's poetry the reader must unearth labyrinthine networks of intertextual relations. While Muldoon's intrusive literary allusions demand the reader's attention, his poetry would remain opaque and open to the charge of pretentiousness if their functions and effects were not properly understood. The same is not true of McGuckian's poetry: unaware of its true dialogism, the reader is likely to detect only disembodied voices. This work has not only introduced the reader to the capacious intellectual resources in which their poetry is grounded, it has also demonstrated the subtlety with which they employ their familiar ghosts and has attempted to show why both poets initiate intertextual relations: parodically to rewrite or comment upon a precursor's work; to approach politically sensitive themes from an oblique angle; to assert an authoritative presence as an Irish poet writing in the English language. Throughout this book Seamus Heaney's work has been used as a contrastive foil to that of the two younger poet: while his use of intertextuality is more direct and more reader-friendly, it is also more self-conscious and angst-ridden given his unease at using literary allusions with respect to the Troubles. The reader may well feel that the work required to comprehend the younger poets’ respective oeuvres is inordinate: although Muldoon provides a thread, his labyrinth is myriadfold; McGuckian does not even supply the thread. The directness of Heaney's poetry with its ostensible transparency seems a more manageable proposition: his intertextual references are, by and large, self-explanatory and provide the reader with the solution to his own particular maze. Yet because of changing historical circumstances and their very different perception of the poet's representative status, the younger poets cannot be expected to reproduce Heaney's characteristically self-conscious style; in Muldoon's case, this is something which is actively opposed.