Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill: Reclaiming women's voice from song

Crosson, S. (2005) ' Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill: Reclaiming Women's Voice from Song ' In: Alison O Malley-Younger and Frank Beardow(Eds.). Representing Ireland Past Present and Future. Sunderland, United Kingdom : University of Sunderland Press.

Abstract

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill is one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Irish literature. Her work, drawing on Irish mythology, folklore and orature has also attracted considerable international acclaim and has been widely translated. However, Ní Dhomhnaill has also indicated an awareness of the problematical relationship of women historically to Irish literature. Women have for centuries being portrayed, whether in the Gaelic aisling or in the literature of the literary revival, as representative of Ireland, often to the neglect of their real lived experiences. Equally, within the Irish literary tradition, as Seán Ó Tuama has noted, “attested works by women are quite rare”(Ó Tuama, 1995). Women’s ‘literature’, as Ní Dhomhnaill suggests, was found largely in the oral tradition much of which went unrecorded. Throughout her work, she regularly draws on aspects of this legacy of women’s performances, including the lament and song traditions, to inform her work. This obvious intertextual process at work in her poetry is examined in this essay with regard to the traditional process of composition of songs and laments by women in Ireland and in relation to its use in other contexts. This paper also explores how this process of reclaiming aspects of Ireland’s oral culture represents Ní Dhomhnaill’s rewriting and replacing of the female voice within her own work while asserting her own right of expression in literature.

Publisher

University of Sunderland Press

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Ireland

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