A Ghazal for the Ends Of Things

Author

Jannell Christine McConnell

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Pierce, Catherine

Committee Member

Kardos, Michael

Committee Member

Lyons, Richard

Date of Degree

5-12-2012

Original embargo terms

MSU Only Indefinitely

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Campus Access Only

Major

English

Degree Name

Master of Arts

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of English

Abstract

In Eavan Boland’s Domestic Violence, it is through the conflation of the secret with the female body that secrets become the way to simultaneously expose, as well as mediate, one of Boland’s most often addressed themes: a split between the public image of Irish woman as mythic symbol and the private realities of the lives of actual women. This paper argues that these are poems that, even as they explore the relationship between the secret and the body, simultaneously begin to embody the secret themselves. In so doing, it is the poems themselves that ultimately become the secret possessors, revealing and concealing in equal measure as they open up a counter-narrative to the public myths of the Irish woman through their repossession of the body and of desire.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/17986

Recommended Citation

McConnell, Jannell Christine, "A Ghazal for the Ends Of Things" (2012). Theses and Dissertations. 146.
https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/td/146