Eavan Boland finds her poetic identity in the significances of her birthplace of Ireland and her gender of an Irish woman. with this identity she shows a keen awareness of the fundamental sense of poetic ethics - to de-and re-construct the traditional literary frame imposed by male points of view, witnessing to the truths and facts of Irish women's experiences in the history of Ireland. In the broad sense of the Irish matter, Boland concerns with the artistic image and its relationship to the facts of women's lives in Ireland and she tries to find the poetic place of
women in pointing the loss of women in Irish history and literary tradition. In this aspect Boland tries to find the proper images to suggest the true identity of women just in history not outside of history. So her dependence on the power of language and on the objective attitudes to the common lives and trivial things of women's lives is the proof for her poetic ethics. Some poems of Boland's blast the muse who helps men to write women as a queen to Ireland as a mother to the children and husband. Instead she urges the muse to keep her place beside women poets in
creating the homely images. In creating the true images of women the common is present and she suggests the woman's potentiality as a subject and a viewer and as a mother and a poet. So Boland destabilizes the images of woman as a grand mythic queen and as an abstract composite of femininity. In this process Boland keeps her tone cold and cool even in showing her powerful views on the female identity. She achieves this attitude through 'looking' and 'watching.' She suggests to look into the mirror towards the general readers as well as poets herself even in her rage to the Irish literary tradition. So she keeps her own characteristic voices in finding and reintroducing the perspectives that run counter to the traditional Irish
male views on woman and history.

• 허현숙(건국대) | Huh,Hyun Sook