“Selective traditions: feminism and the poetry of Colette Bryce, Leontia Flynn and Sinead Morrissey”, University of Oxford, DPhil (2014).
Summary:
This thesis seeks to argue for the problematising role of tradition and generational influence in the work of three Northern Irish poets publishing since the late 1990s. The subjects, Colette Bryce (b. 1970), Leontia Flynn (b. 1974) and Sinéad Morrissey (b. 1972), emerged conterminously. This study presents one of the first critical considerations of their work and it remains conscious of the dominance of conceptions of tradition and lineage which are notable in poetry from Northern Ireland from the twentieth-century onwards. In suggesting that this tradition is problematised for emerging women poets by precursor-peer dominance and the primacy of male perspectives in the tradition, this thesis combines a study of poetics, themes relating to gender, detachment and paratexts. It explores a variety of different critical truisms applied to the poetic generations that precede the younger poets and identifies both compliance and divergences from the contemporary Northern Irish canon.
Irish Women Poets, Tradition, Generational Influences, Colette Bryce, Leontia Flynn, Sinéad Morrissey
