Eavan Boland

Question 1

Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (original 3 volumes)

Answer 1

• 1990, Seamus Deane
• over 4,000 pages of WRITING, not just literature (more comprehensive)
• absolutely dominated by male writers, called “The Boy’s Club ethos of ‘Field Day’”
• Eavan Boland included, but was “sorry to be”, as her female predecessors were not
• Vols. 4 and 5 added on, controversial/sources of debate
• Irish WOMEN’s writing and traditions

Question 2

Eavan Boland background

Answer 2

• 1944-2020
• Dublin, London, and New York (unusual emigrant experience, came from privilege as her father worked in embassy)
• upper middle-class, “of Ireland” but shared an emigrant imagination and other perspectives
• painting and narrative poetry: influenced both by embassy father and artist mother

Question 3

“New Territory”

Answer 3

• 1967
• claiming a new space for herself as a female writer
• both poetry and essays, first book
• “Shakespeare”: poem that worked within sonnet form to discuss the motivation behind literature (loneliness, grief, financial security)
• writing is a technology helping us make sense of the world

Question 4

“The War Horse”

Answer 4

• 1975
• discussed the troubles, what happens when that comes south of the border
• other themes included women emigrating with their children (‘Outside History’ - what’s left outside of narratives)
• key critics: Riona Ni Fhrighil, Jody Allen Randolph, Pillar Villar-Argaiz

Question 5

“The Woman Poet in a National Tradition”

Answer 5

• wrote about a particular Ireland that wasn’t great for women/girls, especially depending on their social class
• Ireland seen through refractions due to emigrant status (blurred line between emigrant and exile)
• claiming Ireland as her “country” vs her “nation” (England technically her country, she didn’t see it as her nation”
• map of carpet in embassy, piecing together a picture
• wrote in English literary tradition that was developed by English men hundreds of years before
• gradually, Irishness and womanhood ideas moved closer into the center of her poetry

Question 6

“The Young Poet”

Answer 6

• working on finding a genre or way of writing that expresses her experience as a young woman in Dublin
• being young, a writer, alive in Ireland

Question 7

“Degas’s Laundresses”

Answer 7

• Two European paintings: Two Laundresses and Repasseuses (Women Ironing)
• who is doing the painting? whose laundry are the women doing?
• roll-sleeved “Aphrodites”
• warning the women not to turn, be afraid of… the man of the house? the artist?

Question 8

“Quarantine”

Answer 8

• about those who died during emigration and the famine (buried in unknown places)
• forgotten histories, trying to represent the ‘unrepresentable’
• discussing the horrors of humanity, seeing what people can do to others (like in Holocaust)
• like Declan O’Rourke “Poor Boy’s Shoes”: Buckley family, horrors of the famine

Question 9

“Child of Our Time”

Answer 9

• 1974, reponse to terrible carb bombs going off south of the border during the troubles
• a lot of criticism on the widespread violence, hurting/killing without aim
• baby lost their life in Dublin bomb blast, so Boland wrote about the loss of innocence
• contradiction: children shouldn’t die before parents, should be learning from ADULT world, adults should be CARING for children
• broken images, republicanism, bombs
• trying to remake/fix national Irish identity