How do poems communicate moral ideas? Can they express concepts in ways that are unique and impossible to replicate in other forms of writing? This book explores these questions by turning to two of the late twentieth century's most important poets: Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill. Their work shows that a poem can act as an example of a moral concept, rather than simply a description or discussion of it. Exploring these two poets via their shared preoccupation with poetry's moral exemplarity opens up new perspectives on their work. The concept of exemplarity is shown to play an important role in these poets' most significant preoccupations, from moral complicity to the nature of lyric speech to literary influence to memorialisation, responsibility, and aesthetic autonomy. Through this new analysis of poetry, critical prose, drama, and archival materials, this book offers a major new study of ethics in the later period of these two writers--including recent underexplored posthumous works. In turn, the book also makes an important intervention in larger debates about literature and morality, and about the field of ethical criticism itself: this is the first book-length study to expand ethical criticism beyond its customary narrative focus. The ethical criticism of fiction is often an exercise in methodological advocacy, urging the use of more literary examples in moral philosophy. As this book shows, including poetry among these examples introduces new, lyric-inflected caveats about the use of literature as a form of moral example: caveats which remain invisible in narrative-centred ethical criticism.

"The book rallies a successful call to expand poetry into the framework of philosophical exemplarity that has previously, for the most part, been retained for the narrative form. The book resoundingly sets out the stall for future studies of moral authority and exemplarity in poetry." - Ian Hickey, Irish Studies Review

"Some of her best close readings come from her chapter on Hill's criticism, and how its stylistic features serve an 'exemplary' purpose. Hill's use of embedded quotation, where 'example' often stands in for argument, is given particular consideration." - Michael Rizq, The Cambridge Quarterly

"Bridget Vincent's Moral Authority in Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill provides a paradigmatic, readable and intelligible account of exemplarity. It is a most welcome addition to critical work on Heaney and Hill ... The book resoundingly sets out the stall for future studies of moral authority and exemplarity in poetry." - Ian Hickey, Irish Studies Review