Unsettling Irish poetic tradition: Eavan Boland’s feminist poetics

For centuries, the Irish poetic tradition has been dominated by male voices. However, in the past few decades, an increasing number of Irish women writers have articulated their grievances against the inferiority of women and the disempowerment of female writing. This paper aims to probe the marginalized female voice by reading Eavan Boland’s poetry. Textual analysis aside, Boland’s critical essays on the lives of Irish women, collected in Object Lessons (1994), will be discussed. The aim of the study is to help shed light on the plight of Irish women and the efforts made by Boland to unsettle the poetic tradition in ever-changing contemporary Ireland. Copyright © 2016 Akade´miai Kiado´, Budapest, Hungary.