SOURCE: Fogarty, Anne. “‘A Noise of Myth’: Speaking (as) Woman in the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Medbh McGuckian.” Paragraph 17, no. 1 (March 1994): 92-102.

In the following essay, Fogarty analyzes the Irish feminist aesthetics of the poetry of Eavan Boland and McGuckian, highlighting both poets' rejection of feminist literary politics.

Although feminist theory has led to the welcome rediscovery and reinstatement of women's writing in many other European cultures, the attempt to recuperate and map out a specifically female literary tradition and aesthetics in Ireland seems to be peculiarly beset by conflict. Indeed, many critics have come to the uncomfortable conclusion that the Irish feminist scholar who goes in search of her mothers' gardens is doomed to failure. As Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill points out in a recent article, a woman writing in Ireland whether in Gaelic or in English does so in the knowledge that the literary legacy she...