The Body And Desire in Contemporary Irish Poetry

by Nordin, Irene Gilsenan; Brewster, Scott; Summers-Bremner, Eluned; Brazeau, Robert; Schrage, Michaela; Hynes, Colleen A; House, Veronica; Holmsten, Elin; Collins, Lucy; Blakeman, Helen; Armstrong, Charles I; O'Brien, Eugene

• ISBN13: 9780716533689
• ISBN10: 0716533685
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-01
• Publisher: Irish Academic Press

Summary

The essays in this collection deal with contemporary Irish poetry and the question of the desiring body as a cultural and historical product, a biological entity and a psycho-sexual construction, and not least as an existential being. Drawing upon the literary theories of, among others, the French post-structuralists, the psychoanalytic theories of Lacan and Kristeva, the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, and feminist philosophers, such as Donna Haraway and Susan Bordo. The contributors explore how contemporary Irish poets, both male and female, give expression to what might be termed a reassessment of material experience. With their various approaches they address the various ways in which the body can be seen as an agent of empowerment and change in the work of Eavan Boland, Ciaran Carson, Mary Dorcey, Seamus Heaney, Rita Ann Higgins, Thomas Kinsella, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Medbh McGuckian, Paula Meehan, John Montague, Paul Muldoon, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction: Re-Mapping the Landscape: The Body as Agent of Political, Social and Spiritual Empowerment in Contemporary Irish Poetry	1	(20)
Irene Gilsenan Nordin
PART I THE BODY POLITIC: TERRITORIAL RECONFIGURATION AND DESIRE
Abject State: Waste and the Exile of the Body in Northern Irish Poetry	21	(19)
Scott Brewster
History's Impasse: Journey, Haunt and Trace in the Poetry of Medbh McGuckian	40	(15)
Eluned Summers-Bremner
Thomas Kinsella's `Local Knowledge'	55	(24)
Robert Brazeau
The Body as Ethical Synecodoche in the Writing of Seamus Heaney	79	(24)
Eugene O'Brien
PART II THE FEMALE BODY: WOMEN'S SEXUAL, MATERNAL, AGEING BODIES AND DESIRE
`Words We Can Grow Old and Die In': Earth Mother and Ageing Mother in Eavan Boland's Poetry	103	(20)
Veronica House
`My Being Cries Out to Be Incarnate': The Virgin Mary and Female Sexuality in Contemporary Irish Women's Poetry	123	(21)
Michaela Schrage-Fruh
`A Song for Every Child I Might Have Had': Infertility and Maternal Loss in Contemporary Irish Poetry	144	(19)
Colleen A. Hynes
PART III THE EXISTENTIAL BODY: THE SELF AND DESIRE FOR THE OTHER
`Like a Wished-For Body': Dialogues of Desire in the Poetry of Medbh McGuckian	163	(19)
Elin Holmsten
`Enough / is Enough': Suffering and Desire in the Poetry of Thomas Kinsella	182	(15)
Lucy Collins
Medbh McGuckian and the Poetics of Mourning	197	(16)
Helen Blakeman
Touch and Go: Seamus Heaney and the Transcendence of the Aesthetic	213	(13)
Charles I. Armstrong
`Betwixt and Between': The Body as Liminal Threshold in the Poetry of Eilean Ni Chuilleanain	226	(18)
Irene Gilsenan Nordin
Contributors	244	(3)
Index	247