Patricia Boyle Haberstroh writes, "Like words and images, these tales are always open to renewal and new interpretations" (Female Figure, 62). Thus, it functions as a complex piece even if the reader is unaware of its personal and political narratives.

Mnemosyne and the female speaker function alongside each other, perhaps amalgamating into one person. She was educated at University College Cork and The University of Oxford. Ed. Thus, in creating these unspeakable moments, Ní Chuilleanáin admits that some narratives are not meant to be fully disclosed but instead should remain a private experience for those who witness the trauma. Thus, she offers symbols as guideposts for the reader to connect the images and subsequently the bodies within her narratives.
“The Architectural Metaphor in the Poetry of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin" Irish University Review 1st ser.

Web. Legend of the Walled-up Wife (translations from the Romanian of Ileana Malancioiu) appeared in 2011.

Through the unsettling tone that emerges from both poems, Ní Chuilleanáin proposes that by liberating women’s voices and exposing women as equitable to men, there is a threat to the patriarchal order. Print. She writes. She creates a mythic gender shape- shifting to subvert, or at least question, traditional mythic figures and their dominance. She uses myth as a teaching tool, unveiling how traditional myth can be destructive, as its deep-rooted ideologies condition society to believe certain.

Ní Chuilleanáin propagates female empowerment in this poem through her depiction of female action despite their unnamed, and subsequently marginal, status. Ní Chuilleanáin seems less focused on the ideology behind certain doctrines, but rather the narratives and practices that belong to each.

The free foot, although analogous to the torn part of the relic and also to Jesus under the Shroud of Turin, is Sister Custos' foot.30 Traditionally, Sister Custos’ foot should be contained under her habit, yet Ní Chuilleanáin depicts it as breaking free to demonstrate liberation from containment. Web. Wake Forest University Press Editorial and Social Media Intern August 2012-May 2014, Writing Center Tutor, February 2013-May 2014, All contents of the lawinsider.com excluding publicly sourced documents are Copyright © 2013-, Mythic contexts and marginalized figures: unveiling eiléan nĺ chuilleanáin’s poetics.

Through her reverent cataloguing of each body part, the subject breathes life into the subject’s “terminal members”. She has very strict guidelines for cleaning the tomb: We would have to close the tomb On the third day, And she gave us all our orders To scrub it and polish it. However, she has charged herself with documenting the past. Sheila Conboy argues that Ní Chuilleanáin rewrites the end of the Odyssey in “The Second Voyage” to show that Odysseus fails and cannot plant the oar on land, but rather is left fighting a losing battle with a feminized nature (Female Figures, 69).

Dillon Johnston proposes that Ní Chuilleanáin maintains secrecy to uphold both personal and linguistic intimacy. If we accept Pagel’s argument alongside the cultural and historical representations of Mary Magdalene, then she becomes a woman that is both inside and outside of the patriarchal tradition. —The Magdalene Sermons and Earlier Poems. At the heart of her work, Ní Chuilleanáin writes about human existence; however she does it so cryptically as not to pin down exactly what that experience is. Ní Chuilleanáin uses myth to negotiate a connection between the personal and impersonal, which for Ní Chuilleanáin is often linked to the political. In depicting the mother as violent, Ní Dhomhnaill creates a split between mother and daughter to foreshadow the daughter’s need to reject her origins and reemerge as a new subject. In doing this, Ní Chuilleanáin highlights the, 21 A powerful sea monster from the Old Testament Isaiah 27:1 “In that day, the LORD will punish with his sword—his fierce, great and powerful sword—Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea”. See Figure 1. 99-113.

Angela Bourke. Dan Griggs. Ní Chuilleanáin puts a great deal of trust in the reader; she gives the reader the task of deducing how her work functions on multi-levels. Through her. As keeper of the object, Sister Custos has a significant degree of power within the church community. Ní Chuilleanáin relates the poem to the notion of exiles, particularly from Ireland and Italy (Williams, 32), stating that the theme of the exile is a prominent motif in both her poetry and her husband’s.12 Although there is no explicit reference to Irish emigrants or even Ireland, the Greek myth functions as a coded political argument about exiles, the inability to return home and the Irish diaspora. We use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. 47 Mnemosyne, goddess of memory and mother of the nine muses in Greek mythology.

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (1942- ) has emerged out of certain patriarchal traditions to become a predominant voice not only in women’s Irish poetry, but Irish poetry as a whole. Although their depictions of maternity differ, all four of the women incorporate coded and direct maternal references. For example in, "The Informant" (MS) she intertwines an old woman’s recapitulation of witnessing murder with the miracle of transubstantiation.

However, Grennan does expose the challenges that are unavoidable when attempting to interpret Ni Chuilleanáin’s work. Her third person voice lends itself to a removed persona that can be viewed as detached or lacking a genuine connection with the subject of the poem, if there is a subject at all. Ní Chuilleanáin's mythic inclusions act as an allegory for all human experience, first and foremost, her own.
Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999. Exemplified via Sister Custos’ “…free foot kicking/Under the white sheet of history” she is situated both inside and outside of history. As discussed earlier, water plays an important role in Ní Dhomhnaill’s poetry, as it represents a space for transformation.