"This Is a Female Text": Embodiment in Contemporary Irish Women's Poetry Open Access

Abstract

This thesis explores the concept of embodiment and portrayals of women’s bodies within post-1950 Irish women’s poetry. Chapter 1 of this thesis explores the Mother Ireland symbol that permeated Irish literature for centuries and the ways in which one poet, Eavan Boland, pushed back against this passive portrayal of women in canonical Irish poetry. Boland’s poems convey women who are representations of the shift in the Mother Ireland tradition, a shift toward women who are more realistic but who are nonetheless still symbols of Ireland and generalizations of Irish women. In Chapter 2, I argue that Boland portrays an alternative representation of womanhood through artifactual women. I also examine the artifactual positioning of the women in Seamus Heaney’s 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, I turn to another alternative portrayal of women: the mother herself. As portrayed by Eavan Boland and Sinéad Morrissey, mothers can be speaking, active women with a realm of bodily experiences. I complicate this idea of the embodied mother, however, by exploring the ways in which poetic mothers can also be disembodied through a focus on the artifactual representation of the Virgin Mary and the cruel mistreatment of pregnant women and single mothers in Irish society through various depictions of the death of Ann Lovett. In Chapter 4, I explore a final, alternate method for the poetic embodiment of women. Through an analysis of A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, I argue that writing itself can be an act of embodiment. Through archival expansion and critical fabulation, Ní Ghríofa excavates a woman that was once lost within the Irish tradition and simultaneously learns more about herself and her own body. This thesis is an exploration of the myriad of methods through which contemporary Irish women portray themselves and their bodies in poetry, noting the ways in which Irish women inscribe poetic embodiment into the Irish tradition as they search for and create spaces for themselves and other women.

Table of Contents

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

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………… 2

Chapter 1: Eavan Boland’s Critique of Mother Ireland ………………………………...……… 13

Chapter 2: Women’s Bodies as Artifacts in the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney....36

Chapter 3: The Complex Nature of Embodying the Poetic Mother……………..……………....62

Chapter 4: The Body as Archive in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat……………..87

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….…..115

Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………………………123

About this Master's Thesis

Rights statement

• Permission granted by the author to include this thesis or dissertation in this repository. All rights reserved by the author. Please contact the author for information regarding the reproduction and use of this thesis or dissertation.

School	Laney Graduate School
Department	English
Degree	M.A.
Submission	Master's Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, English Women's Studies
Keyword	critical fabulation Ireland Seamus Heaney women's poetry Doireann Ní Ghríofa women's writing poetry feminism Eavan Boland post-1950 literature Irish Studies Sinéad Morrissey
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Geraldine Higgins, Emory University
Committee Members	Nathan Suhr-Sytsma, Emory University

Last modified

Primary PDF

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Actions
	"This Is a Female Text": Embodiment in Contemporary Irish Women's Poetry ()	2022-04-09 07:48:10 -0400	Press to Select an action Download

Supplemental Files

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Actions