Memory and Enlightenment in the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Medbh McGuckian

Abstract

Memory dominates modern Irish poetry and retrospection is often said to govern Irish culture more generally. The eighteenth century is a particularly vexed memorial presence in Eavan Boland’s work, its representation characterized by fracture, separation, and loss. Medbh McGuckian’s collection Shelmalier celebrates and mourns the 1798 rebellion as a radical moment called to mind through a baroque and sometimes macabre imaginary of relics, bodies, and textual fragments.