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ISSN : 1226-4946(Print)
ISSN : 2288-5412(Online)
The Yeats Journal of Korea Vol.26 pp.217-244
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.14354/yjk.2006.26.217

Eavan Boland’s Poetics of Body in Outside History

Han Jihee

Abstract

Irish contemporary poet Eavan Boland mounts the starting point of her poetry toa very practical issue of how to imagine women’s lives inside Irish history. Given E.H. Carr’s modern notion of the ‘historiography’ of history, history that used to recordthe progress in the public sphere can be regarded as masculine. And in suchmasculine history women, who have often been associated with Nature due to theirbiological function, have never been imagined as active contributors to historicalprogress. Likewise, Irish women’s domestic experiences have been discarded asworthless while Irish men’s public experiences have been integrated to the progress ofIrish history. Troubled by the fact that Irish women's lived experiences have beensilenced in Irish history, Boland has been exploring the possibility of eroticizing suchmasculine history and creating a livable space for real-life Irish women in her poetry.
Therefore in this essay I'll look into Outside History (1990) among her manybooks of poems published since 1962. Outside History, which comprises of threeparts, is especially significant in her poetic career because in it Boland’s individualand communal concerns as a woman and woman poet are intricately woven andexpanded to the issue of the historiography of Irish history. Specifically, I willexamine how Boland engages in a very creative project of diving into Irish historyand emerging with a body of lived experiences of women that have been silencedand treated as non-existence. I will also illuminate the fact that Boland’s erotics ofhistory suggests a new alternative way of writing political poetry in Ireland.Ultimately, I aim to show that Boland, not by romanticizing past women in a newmyth and legend but by etching out an original poetic space, has successivelyswerved from the formidable influence of W. B. Yeats and become a representativepoet of her own.

『역사 밖에서』(Outside History)와 이반 볼랜드(Eavan Boland)의 몸의 시학*

한지희
이화여대

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