Mary Devenport O'Neill: writing the Free State

Simple item page
dc.check.date10000-01-01
dc.check.embargoformatE-thesis on CORA onlyen
dc.check.entireThesisEntire Thesis Restricted
dc.check.infoIndefiniteen
dc.check.opt-outYesen
dc.check.reasonThis thesis is due for publication or the author is actively seeking to publish this materialen
dc.contributor.advisorCoughlan, Patriciaen
dc.contributor.advisorO'Connor, Maureenen
dc.contributor.authorPomeroy, Laura Mernie
dc.contributor.funderIrish Research Councilen
dc.date.accessioned2017-03-15T12:46:35Z
dc.date.issued2016
dc.date.submitted2016
dc.description.abstractThis thesis explores Mary Devenport O’Neill’s (1879-1967) writing in its contemporary aesthetic contexts and considers its role in the culture of the Free State in the 1930s and 1940s. There has hitherto been no extensive examination of Devenport’scomplete work. I ask how her writing and artistic status within her social milieu represents her cultural and political position, or more specifically, how women’s creativity manifested itself within a predominantly masculinist nationalist system. Devenport’s roles as poet, playwright, hostess of a literary salon and wife of education minister and author Joseph O’Neill placed her at the centre of intellectual debate during the years of the Irish Free State. Her poetry and verse-plays appeared in Irish literary magazines throughout the ‘30s and ‘40s, most regularly in The Dublin Magazine, as well as being broadcast on Radio Éireann and performed by the Abbey Theatre and Lyric Theatre. Her single volume of poetry, Prometheus and Other Poems (1929) was published by Jonathan Cape, and she also collaborated with her husband on a verse-play. I have used contemporary sources -- letters, memoirs, and archives -- to assemble information about Devenport’s cultural associations, as well as her aims and ambitions. I establish her strategies for aesthetic, intellectual and ideological articulation in her writing, analysing her as a distinctively modernist poet, noting influences and parallels from modernist writing internationally. I examine Devenport as a woman writer and consider how her writing may be seen as a precursor for some later Irish women’s work. This case study of Devenport’s writing also draws on contemporary feminist discussion and methodological approaches to previously neglected women’s writing. Throughout, my analysis shows how Devenport’s work is aesthetically significant in its own right and merits far wider dissemination than it has yet received.en
dc.description.statusNot peer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Version
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationPomeroy, L. M. 2016. Mary Devenport O'Neill: writing the Free State. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/3786
dc.languageEnglishen
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherUniversity College Corken
dc.rights© 2016, Laura Mernie Pomeroy.en
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/en
dc.subjectIrish women poetsen
dc.subjectIrish literatureen
dc.subjectFeminist literary historyen
dc.subjectIrish women playwrightsen
dc.subjectWomen's writing in the Irish Free Stateen
dc.subject1930s & 1940s poetryen
dc.subjectModernist Irish writersen
dc.thesis.opt-outtrue
dc.titleMary Devenport O'Neill: writing the Free Stateen
dc.typeDoctoral thesisen
dc.type.qualificationlevelDoctoral Degree (Structured)en
dc.type.qualificationnamePhD (Arts)en
Files
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Thumbnail Image
Name:
license.txt
Size:
5.62 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description:
Download
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Decision To Withold EThesis Summer 2016 Laura Pomeroy.pdf
Size:
277.84 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Opt-Out Form
Collections
Doctoral Theses
College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences - Doctoral Theses
English - Doctoral Theses