Emerging Identities

In the process of Irish identity-construction, myth has been of central, almost exclusive importance in a way unparalleled by other national traditions. In this context, no national emblem has become as formative and ubiquitous as the personification of Ireland herself. The representation of Ireland as a woman in various guises (Cathleen Ní Houlihan, Éire, Erin, the Shan Van Vocht, Dark Rosaleen, Mother Ireland) is a central motif also in the Irish poetic tradition, a tradition that, for centuries, was dominated by male poets. Within the span of the last thirty years, women have increasingly challenged and effectively rewritten the canon, subverting national gender stereotypes and replacing them with versions of their own emerging identities.
Emerging Identities retraces the gradual emergence of women's poetic identities by providing a comparative in-depth study of the works of three major contemporary Irish women poets, Eavan Boland, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Medbh McGuckian. Following a short survey of the development of the dominating myth of Ireland as a woman and a brief sketch of the ways in which, until very recently, this myth has been powerful enough to silence Irish women's voices and to overshadow their identities, this study devotes one detailed chapter on each of the three poets respectively. After exploring their work in the light of its subversive treatment of myth and national representations of gender, Emerging Identities concludes with a comparative assessment of the three poets' achievements and with an outlook on the current place of gender issues in contemporary Irish women's poetry.