Speaking of silence : myth and history in contemporary Irish women's poetry (1989-2004).

Although, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Eavan Boland and Medbh McGuckian avoid
labelling themselves 'feminist poets', each provides a 'feminist insight' into what
Catriona Clutterbuck describes as their 'marginalization from official systems of
representation,.J This thesis will primarily discuss how each of these women
poets, from both the North and South of Ireland, writes from the margins of Irish
myth and history to question the concept of silence. The introduction interrogates
the meaning of silence in relation to wider philosophic responses to the politics of
silence in contemporary Irish poetry. This chapter will also briefly review some of
the more monumental anthologies of Irish literature and major works of litelary
criticism (1989-2004) to illustrate how women poets have emerged from their
obscurity and established themselves as prominent figures within a patriarchal
tradition that had previously marginalized their voices.
As an example of their rise in status, Chapter II will have a comparative
look at how all three poets employ the body to paradoxically speak of women's
silence, while using it to maintain a level of silence. This thesis will then move on
to discuss how Ni Dhomhnaill, Boland and McGuckian all write from the margins
of Irish myth and history to speak of the unspeakable. In Chapter III, Ni
Dhomhnaill speaks of women's silence through Irish myth and history by
engaging in the oral tradition of storytelling. Whereas Ni Dhomhnaill favours
myth over history, Boland's overall ambition in Chapter IV is to write woman out
of her silence, thus 'out of myth [and] into history' by using her autobiography The fifth chapter will return to the mythical realms of McGuckian' s more radical
approach to history in her later poems from Captain Lavender (1994) and discuss
her private symbolic re-reading of Northern Ireland's political history. Since in
much of their later poetry, Ni Dhomhnaill, Boland and McGuckian all adopt the
ethical position of speaking while maintaining a certain silence, Chapter VI will
conclude with a comparative look at some of the Irish women poets writing of
silence in the twenty-first century.