“Mise Éire”: Revisions of the Myth of Ireland in Modern Irish Poetry

Peer-reviewed article, Submitted 9.01.2025, Accepted 20..03.2025

Maria Fengler

maria.fengler@ug.edu.pl
Uniwersity of Gdańsk (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5009-9705

Abstract

The Celtic myth of the goddess personifying Ireland permeates Irish literature from the earliest legends to the 20th century. The poems from the 1970s and 1980s analysed here, however, point to a rebellion against the myth and the social and political attitudes it projects, defamiliarizing the national narrative through strategies of demythologization, the grotesque and mockery. Seamus Heaney’s poem Bog Queen turns the goddess into a terrifying zombie unleashing ritual violence, while Paul Muldoon’s Aisling – into an anorexic vision leading young men to martyrdom. Eavan Boland demythologizes the figure of Mother Ireland, showing in her stead the historical fate of Irish women: the prostitute and the immigrant mother. In Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s mocking portrayal Ireland is Old Gummy Granny, blind and deaf to contemporary reality. The poetic revisions of the myth diagnose the exhaustion of national ideology, indicating the human cost of sacralised violence and the anachronism of the call for blood sacrifice in the modern world.



Keywords:

Mother Ireland, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, aisling, defamiliarization, modern irish poetry

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Published
2025-09-10

Cited by

Fengler, M. (2025) “‘Mise Éire’: Revisions of the Myth of Ireland in Modern Irish Poetry”, Konteksty, 349(2), pp. 18–26. doi: 10.36744/k.4101.

Authors

Maria Fengler 
maria.fengler@ug.edu.pl
Uniwersity of Gdańsk Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5009-9705

Maria Fengler – anglistka, tłumaczka, adiunktka w Instytucie Anglistyki i Amerykanistyki Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego. Autorka nagrodzonej przez „Literaturę na Świecie” monografii irlandzkiego poety Michaela Longleya Między Itaką a Belfastem (2010) oraz artykułów na temat współczesnej poezji i prozy irlandzkiej; współredaktorka monografii wieloautorskich Między słowem a rzeczywistością. Poezja Eliota wobec cielesności i Wcielenia (2015) i Striking the Chords of Spirit and Flesh in Polish Poetry (2016); współredaktorka polskiego przekładu Towards a Christian Poetics M. Edwardsa (Ku poetyce chrześcijańskiej, 2017).



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