The Great Irish Famine and Eavan Boland's Poetry

This thesis aims to narrate the devastating event of the Great Irish Famine (1845-1850), widely considered one of the most horrendous historical events in Irish history. The Famine has changed Ireland in a very deep way; both demographically, as the population faced a decrease of 2 million people and politically, in various ways, most evidently, as Ireland completely lost their already fading faith in England. This event left a scar on the Irish nation, but it hasn’t always been analysed as an emotional and collective trauma. This study wants to look at this tragedy through a lens that prioritizes the emotional weight it left on Irish people, and to do so it makes use of a poet of the 20th century, Eavan Boland (1944-2020). Some of her poems will be analysed in this study, like “That the Science of Cartography is Limited” and “Mise Eire”, where Boland uses her beautiful writing to give voice to the voiceless people of the Famine and to deal with themes of memory, grief and national identity.