Limits and Languages in Contemporary Irish Women's Poetry

Limits and Languages in Contemporary Irish Women's Poetry examines the transactions between the two main languages of Irish literature, English and Irish, and their formative role in contemporary poetry by Irish women. Daniela Theinová explores the works of well-known poets such as Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Biddy Jenkinson and Medbh McGuckian, combining for the first time a critical analysis of the language issue with a focus on the historical marginality of women in the Irish literary tradition. Acutely alert to the textures of individual poems even as she reads these against broader critical-theoretical horizons, Theinová engages directly with texts in both Irish and English. By highlighting these writers' uneasy poetic and linguistic identity, and by introducing into this wider context some more recent poetsincluding Vona Groarke, Caitríona O'Reilly, Sinéad Morrissey, Ailbhe Darcy and Aifric Mac Aodhathis book proposes a fundamental critical reconsideration of major late-twentieth-century Irish women poets, and, by extension, the nation's canon.

Broadens the context in which poetry by women has mostly been discussed Contributes simultaneously to two fields, both Gaelic literary studies and anglophone Irish literary criticism Offers an overview of the merits and pitfalls of literary feminism, but also proposes vistas of a new canon

Autorentext

Daniela Theinová is Senior Lecturer in the English Department and a member of the Centre for Irish Studies at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. She has contributed to Post-Ireland? Essays on Contemporary Irish Poetry (2017) and A History of Irish Women's Poetry (2020). Her translations include poetry by Vona Groarke, Caitríona O'Reilly, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Aifric Mac Aodha.

Klappentext

Limits and Languages in Contemporary Irish Women s Poetry examines the transactions between the two main languages of Irish literature, English and Irish, and their formative role in contemporary poetry by Irish women. Daniela Theinová explores the works of well-known poets such as Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Biddy Jenkinson and Medbh McGuckian, combining for the first time a critical analysis of the language issue with a focus on the historical marginality of women in the Irish literary tradition. Acutely alert to the textures of individual poems even as she reads these against broader critical-theoretical horizons, Theinová engages directly with texts in both Irish and English. By highlighting these writers uneasy poetic and linguistic identity, and by introducing into this wider context some more recent poets including Vona Groarke, Caitríona O Reilly, Sinéad Morrissey, Ailbhe Darcy and Aifric Mac Aodhäthis book proposes a fundamental critical reconsideration of major late-twentieth-century Irish women poets, and, by extension, the nation s canon.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Uncertain Identities.- 2. Part I: NEW LANDS FOR NEW WORDS.- 3. Revolutionary Laughter: Irish Poets Dismantling Old Icons and Shibboleths.- 4. Figures in a Landscape: Women on Language, Land and Desire.- 5. Part II: SECRET SCRIPTS.- 6. The Muse in Question: Tropes of Inspiration Revisited.- 7. Poetry of Silence: Rhetorical Concealment and the Possibility of Speech.- 8. Kinds of Between: The Margin as a Mainspring.- 9. Original in Translation: Poets between Languages.- 10. In and Out of Ireland: New Poets and New Places.- 11. Conclusion: Feminism after Poetry.