Villar-Argáiz, Pilar

Dr. Pilar Villar Argáiz lectures in the Department of English Philology at the University of Granada, Spain, where she obtained a European Doctorate in English Studies (Irish Literature). She has published extensively on the representation of femininity in contemporary Irish women’s poetry, on cinematic representations of Ireland, and on the theoretical background and application of feminism and postcolonialism to the study of Irish literature. She has also edited two books on English literature.

Eavan Boland's Evolution as an Irish Woman Poet

2007 0-7734-5383-0
This study re-evaluates Boland’s work in the dual light of two important ideologies within modern Irish writing: feminism and postcolonialism. Its main objective is to analyze Boland’s evolution as an Irish woman poet in her attempt to overcome marginalization as a postcolonial gendered subject. By bringing together postcolonial and feminist theorizations of identity, this study demonstrates how Boland gradually undermines the (presumably authentic) representations of ‘woman’ and ‘nation’ she has inherited. By describing ‘Irishness’ and ‘womanhood’ in terms of fluidity and hybridity, Boland’s poetry exposes the constructedness of identity itself and allows the speaker to find a place freed from authoritative ideologies. In so doing, Boland manages to present a background where new decolonizing identities can emerge. In other words, it is here where she finds her way out as an outsider within an outsider’s culture.