From Anna Liffey to Ann Lovett: The Search for Female Embodiment in Contemporary Irish Poetry Open Access

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the spectrum of ways in which women portray themselves and are portrayed in contemporary Irish poetry. In the first chapter of this thesis, I argue that Eavan Boland’s critique of the passive woman in canonical poetry was a necessary and powerful mode of entering the patriarchal Irish poetic tradition, as Boland’s poetic subjects serve as new symbols for who women are and what their role in Irish literature is. Boland’s poems portray women who are representations of the shift in the Mother Ireland tradition, shifts toward women who are more realistic but are nonetheless symbols for Ireland and generalizations of Irish women. In the second chapter, I argue that some of Boland’s poems do not engage with this particular portrayal of womanhood as her work begins looking towards a closer representation of embodied women through the depictions of artifactual women. I argue in Chapter 2 that Seamus Heaney also establishes an artifactual positioning of the women in his bog body poems, noting the fact that the bog bodies, by virtue of their preservation, are already artifacts and thus not capable of being embodied. In Chapter 3 of this thesis, I explore various Boland poems that depict real women and real bodies but do not find any examples of a more holistic and truer embodiment in her poetry. For more embodied subjects, I turn to the poetry of Sinéad Morrissey and Caitríona O’Reilly, two contemporary Irish female writers who come close to the realm of embodiment by describing and understanding their own experiences and their own bodies in their poems. I trace the spectrum of ways in which contemporary Irish writers portray women, from Boland’s new Irish symbol to the artifactual poems which permeate her work as well as that of Heaney to the nearly embodied women that Morrissey and O’Reilly write. However, I conclude that full embodiment is not possible through language, but language is one means through which subjects might approach and understand their own bodies.

Table of Contents

Preface ……………………………………………………………………………………...…….................... 1

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………..................… 4

Chapter 1: Eavan Boland’s Critique of Mother Ireland ………………………………...…….........…14

Chapter 2: Women’s Bodies as Artifacts in the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney....35

Chapter 3: Writing the Body in Contemporary Irish Poetry ……………………..…………….........62

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………...…....................81

Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………..…………...................……86

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	English
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, Modern
Keyword	Ireland Contemporary Poetry Poetry Irish Studies Eavan Boland feminism Seamus Heaney
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Geraldine Higgins, Emory University
Committee Members	Hazel Gold, Emory University Nathan Suhr-Sytsma, Emory University

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