Eavan Boland's Evolution as an Irish Woman Poet - An Outsider within an Outsider's Culture (Hardcover)

This study provides an analysis of Eavan Boland's evolution as a Irish woman poet which is informed by feminist and postcolonial ideologies. This work should appeal to scholars interested in Irish poetry, feminism, and postcolonialism. This study re-evaluates Boland's work in the dual light of two important ideologies within modern Irish writing: feminism and postcolonialism. Its main objective is to analyze Boland's evolution as an Irish woman poet in her attempt to overcome marginalization as a postcolonial gendered subject. By bringing together postcolonial and feminist theorizations of identity, this study demonstrates how Boland gradually undermines the (presumably authentic) representations of 'woman' and 'nation' she has inherited. By describing 'Irishness' and 'womanhood' in terms of fluidity and hybridity, Boland's poetry exposes the constructedness of identity itself and allows the speaker to find a place freed from authoritative ideologies. In so doing, Boland manages to present a background where new decolonizing identities can emerge. In other words, it is here where she finds her way out as an outsider within an outsider's culture.