The Poetics Of Exile In The Poetry Of Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland is a great poet of contemporary Ireland and her poetry has long been considered to be the true representation of Irish identity. Even the studies about Boland's poetry are varied, dispelling the dense fog of feminism and post colonialism, the present thesis endeavors to scrutinize these poems from the perspective of exile, to which modern scholars and critics have not yet paid enough attention.For the poet Boland, like most other literary giants of her nation, there has always been a problem of Irishness and national identity. And for the poet, it requires more attention on the identity of woman poet. To struggle to find the true presentation of these ideas, Boland has developed a poetic beyond the literary tradition, focusing on the silence, the other-whereness and the exileness. Attempting to explore the poetics of exile in Boland's poetry, the author will develop the main idea from five aspects: Chapter one gives a brief literature review and explains the thesis'research values and research approaches. Chapter two mainly discusses exile in Boland's poetry and its natural tendency. Chapter three discusses the identity crisis embodied in Boland's poetry and her coming out of myth and into history. Chapter four deals with the ways of defying exile. The poetics of exile can be simply revealed in the three aspects as follows: weird objects, the space between two worlds, and the use of silence to recover loss. The epilogue (i.e. chapter five) sums up the main arguments, but further points out that Boland has indeed found an individual and collective self from her poetry creating, especially by concentrating on the themes of emigration, exile and the other-whereness. Through the studies of Boland's poetics of exile, we find that the Irish-ness is actually not pure and authentic, but daily things found in the ordinary and the unheroic issues, which are typical Irish. This understanding has of course exerted and will continue to have much stronger influence on the imagination of Irish-ness.