(Re)Possessing historical perception through poetic voice: a phenomenological study of the poetry of Eavan Boland

Repossession, reconstruction, re-visioning, renaming -- all are words used to describe the process through which female writers have been working to reclaim a history that has been previously silent. This work of reclamation has spanned over many decades. Many female writers have been a part of this revisionist tradition. The rewriting of female roles within myth gives new voice and depth, and offers repossession. The Irish poet Eavan Boland is one of these writers whose works create new skin over old scars. By including within our literary present a de-construction of the traditional twodimensional image of Woman in myth, and by giving voice to the previously absent realities, the re-visionist writer affects her reader in a profound manner. Because myths are culturally constructed, readers experience their de-construction as a loss. There is a disequilibrium created within this act. The fracturing of the old comfortable myths and then Boland‘s revisioning work to not only change the perceptions of one reader, but on a larger scale, by directly confronting myth, Boland is working to change the consciousness of our culture.