ABSTRACT

Throughout Irish history - and especially in the years immediately following the Act of Union and the later ‘Troubles’ at the end of the twentieth century - writers have turned to the narrative of lovers from ‘across the divide’, in multiple permutations, to explore the complexities of the Anglo-Irish relationship. This article will focus on The Flower Master and Other Poems (1993), an early collection from the contemporary Belfast poet Medbh McGuckain. In explicating how a select number of these poems engaged with sexual intimacy, conflict, the afterlives of Seamus Heaney and the colonial romance trope, this article will elucidate how McGuckian's work is charged with a particular erotic energy. In The Flower Master, sexuality develops in the shadow of a complex history and contemporary political contexts, creating a poetics that writes the province's Troubled past as intimately interwoven with the pairing of sex, desire, and violent conflict. Ultimately, this article argues that McGuckian plays with the representational possibilities offered to her through the rhetoric of the colonial romance trope, suggesting that sexual desire itself is conditioned by the political conditions that shaped the province's difficult history.

摘要

纵观爱尔兰历史——尤其是在《联合法案》和 20 世纪末后来的“麻烦”之后的几年里——作家们已经转向了“跨越鸿沟”的恋人叙事，以多种排列方式来探索英爱关系的复杂性。本文将重点介绍当代贝尔法斯特诗人梅德布·麦古凯恩的早期作品集《花大师和其他诗歌》 （1993 年）。在解释这些诗歌中的一些如何与性亲密、冲突、Seamus Heaney 的来世和殖民浪漫的比喻有关时，本文将阐明 McGuckian 的作品如何被赋予一种特殊的色情能量。在花大师, 性在复杂的历史和当代政治背景的阴影下发展，创造了一种诗学，将这个省的麻烦过去写成与性、欲望和暴力冲突的配对密切相关。最终，本文认为，麦古基安通过殖民浪漫比喻的修辞为她提供了具有代表性的可能性，这表明性欲本身受到塑造该省艰难历史的政治条件的制约。