Negative Polarity in Eavan Boland's ‘The Famine Road’

Abstract

The essay that follows outlines a cognitive stylistic framework to identify and analyse the pattern of negation in the poem ‘The Famine Road’ by Eavan Boland (1975) and the effects engendered on the reader through manipulation of the text worlds (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007) created by the poem. It also traces the various voices of this polyphonic work and examines their interactions in terms of Stockwell's (2009) model of literary resonance. The framework is derived from a combination of Givón's (1993) classification of different types of negation, text world theory (Werth 1999) and particularly Gavins (2007) development of text world theory to account for how metaphors draw together two often conflicting text worlds; and Stockwell's (2009) model of literary resonance which examines, identifies and analyses the various processes which act on literary figures as they are maintained, allowed to decay or are occluded by new figures. The analysis demonstrates how Boland manipulates these features in order to generate the felt absences of the poem, which act to communicate the sense of loss that pervades the poem. The analysis will also show how negation is used to draw into proximity and ground the metaphoric association between the two text worlds, which underpins the poem. Finally, the analysis will show how this strategy may allow this sense of loss to resonate for the reader.