The Muse in Question: Tropes of Inspiration Revisited

Abstract

This chapter proceeds from instances in which women react against the habitual troping of the female muse to make meta-poetic observations on the search for poetic identity and authentic expression, as achieved through mock paroles and secret writing in general. Theinová demonstrates how, insisting on the essentially elusive character of the speaking “I,” Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Paula Meehan, Medbh McGuckian and Biddy Jenkinson document the transition from silence and imposed objectivity to assertive subjectivity. This chapter further explores how the images of cryptic personalism and domesticity in those writings are often the moments when the political becomes the poetic.