The perspective of experience: body and space in contemporary Irish women's poetry

Abstract

This PhD thesis focuses on the body-space connection in the works of two contemporary Irish poets, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Paula Meehan. The categories of space and body are here considered as dynamic and complementary entities, in which bodily perception and experience play a crucial role. The thesis is divided into three main chapters. In the first an overview of the major critical works about spatiality and the body is provided, displaying the complex and multifaceted relationship between the two. Pivotal references, such as Lefebvre's The Production of Space, Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space and Michel Foucault's Utopian Body, are studied so as to explore the mutual influence of man and the environment and the liminal quality of the human body. The second chapter offers an attentive reading of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's poetic works, in which domestic and religious spaces offer a focus for the interchange between bodily presence and absence. The third chapter explores Paula Meehan's poetry, centering primarily on the relation between the body and the urban space. The overall aim of this work is to demonstrate how the body-space connection serves the purpose of reevaluating the position of women in Irish literature, society and history. This is achieved through a reconsideration of the role of human experience in relation to language, everyday life and human bonds.