The present thesis is concerned with how the poetry written in Northern Ireland throughout the twentieth century reifies the city of Belfast through language, metaphor and imagery, compiling a concrete constellation of aesthetic experiments. It also examines how its poets have represented not only Belfasts concrete and architectural landmarks, but also its historical and spatial displacements. Due to the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, through which Ulster remained a constitutive part of the British Isles, while the South started to build the foundations of what was going to become the Republic of Ireland, Northern Irish poets have built a poetic landscape that has been instead incessantly fragmented through the motifs of alienation and displacement of subjectivity. Through the analysis of the Belfast poems by the poets Louis MacNeice, John Hewitt, Padraic Fiacc, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian, Seamus Heaney, Sinéad Morrissey, Leontia Flynn, Allen Gillis and Miriam Gamble, the thesis shows the poetic architecture of Belfast points to wider sociological spaces. It is never alone, or even single, but always plural and globally referential. Through a space of confluence which brings together dissimilar discourses, the selected poems present a desire to possess Belfast artistically, a city where art, history and memories intermingle and interact in a dynamic manner. Images, styles and ideas are carried from generation to generation and create a constellation of fearful and hopeful dreams. It engages past and present in a fruitful reflection on identitarian and artistic belonging. / A presente tese tem como objetivo compreender como a poesia escrita na Irlanda do Norte representa a cidade de Belfast durante o século vinte. A hipótese defendida pela tese é a de que o trabalho poético com a métrica, figuras de linguagem e imagens cria uma constelação de experimentos estéticos. O trabalho também compreende como os poetas recriaram não somente os pontos de referência arquitetônicos de Belfast, mas também os seus próprios deslocamentos históricos e geográficos. Devido à assinatura do tratado anglo-irlandês em 1922 através do qual o Ulster se manteve parte das Ilhas Britânicas e o sul começava a 7 construir as fundações do que seria chamada futuramente de República da Irlanda, os poetas pertencentes à Irlanda do Norte criaram uma paisagem poética que é incessantemente fragmentada por meio da alienação e do deslocamento subjetivo. A análise dos poemas de Belfast escritos por Louis MacNeice, John Hewitt, Padraic Fiacc, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian, Seamus Heaney, Sinéad Morrissey, Leontia Flynn, Allen Gillis e Miriam Gamble, demonstra que a arquitetura poética de Belfast aponta para espaços sociológicos mais abrangentes. A cidade não é retratada singularmente, mas em sua conexão com outras localidades globais. Por meio de um espaço de confluência, que agrupa discursos diversos, os poemas selecionados apresentam um desejo simbólico de possuir Belfast, uma cidade em que arte, história e memórias interagem de forma dinâmica. Imagens e estilos são passados de geração para geração, criando uma constelação de sonhos aterrorizantes e esperançosos, que engajam passado e presente em uma reflexão sobre pertencimento identitário e artístico.

The present thesis is concerned with how the poetry written in Northern Ireland throughout the twentieth century reifies the city of Belfast through language, metaphor and imagery, compiling a concrete constellation of aesthetic experiments. It also examines how its poets have represented not only Belfasts concrete and architectural landmarks, but also its historical and spatial displacements. Due to the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, through which Ulster remained a constitutive part of the British Isles, while the South started to build the foundations of what was going to become the Republic of Ireland, Northern Irish poets have built a poetic landscape that has been instead incessantly fragmented through the motifs of alienation and displacement of subjectivity. Through the analysis of the Belfast poems by the poets Louis MacNeice, John Hewitt, Padraic Fiacc, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian, Seamus Heaney, Sinéad Morrissey, Leontia Flynn, Allen Gillis and Miriam Gamble, the thesis shows the poetic architecture of Belfast points to wider sociological spaces. It is never alone, or even single, but always plural and globally referential. Through a space of confluence which brings together dissimilar discourses, the selected poems present a desire to possess Belfast artistically, a city where art, history and memories intermingle and interact in a dynamic manner. Images, styles and ideas are carried from generation to generation and create a constellation of fearful and hopeful dreams. It engages past and present in a fruitful reflection on identitarian and artistic belonging. / A presente tese tem como objetivo compreender como a poesia escrita na Irlanda do Norte representa a cidade de Belfast durante o século vinte. A hipótese defendida pela tese é a de que o trabalho poético com a métrica, figuras de linguagem e imagens cria uma constelação de experimentos estéticos. O trabalho também compreende como os poetas recriaram não somente os pontos de referência arquitetônicos de Belfast, mas também os seus próprios deslocamentos históricos e geográficos. Devido à assinatura do tratado anglo-irlandês em 1922 através do qual o Ulster se manteve parte das Ilhas Britânicas e o sul começava a 7 construir as fundações do que seria chamada futuramente de República da Irlanda, os poetas pertencentes à Irlanda do Norte criaram uma paisagem poética que é incessantemente fragmentada por meio da alienação e do deslocamento subjetivo. A análise dos poemas de Belfast escritos por Louis MacNeice, John Hewitt, Padraic Fiacc, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian, Seamus Heaney, Sinéad Morrissey, Leontia Flynn, Allen Gillis e Miriam Gamble, demonstra que a arquitetura poética de Belfast aponta para espaços sociológicos mais abrangentes. A cidade não é retratada singularmente, mas em sua conexão com outras localidades globais. Por meio de um espaço de confluência, que agrupa discursos diversos, os poemas selecionados apresentam um desejo simbólico de possuir Belfast, uma cidade em que arte, história e memórias interagem de forma dinâmica. Imagens e estilos são passados de geração para geração, criando uma constelação de sonhos aterrorizantes e esperançosos, que engajam passado e presente em uma reflexão sobre pertencimento identitário e artístico.

This thesis seeks to argue for the problematising role of tradition and generational influence in the work of three Northern Irish poets publishing since the late 1990s. The subjects, Colette Bryce (b. 1970), Leontia Flynn (b. 1974) and Sinéad Morrissey (b. 1972), emerged coterminously, each publishing with major UK publishers. Together they represent a generation of assured female poetic voices. This study presents one of the first critical considerations of the work of these poets, and it remains conscious of the dominance of conceptions of tradition and lineage which are notable in poetry from Northern Ireland from the twentieth-century onwards. In suggesting that this tradition is problematised for emerging women poets by precursor-peer dominance and the primacy of male perspectives in the tradition, this thesis combines a study of poetics, themes relating to gender, detachment and paratexts. From consideration of these elements, it proposes that contemporary poets are not necessarily subject to the powers of tradition and influence, but rather, are capable of a selective approach that in turn demonstrates the malleability of contemporary traditions. The approaches are laid out in four chapters which move from a consideration of “threshold” paratexts (following from the work of Gérard Genette), including book reviews and dedications, through studies of thematic divergence and detachment, the changing status of women’s poetry traditions within Northern Ireland and beyond, the significance of gendered subjects in poetry, and influence found not in thematic or paratextual aspects, but in the individual aspects of poetic form. These aspects combine to form poems and the tradition(s) in which they continue. The thesis provides extensive coverage of the work of Bryce, Flynn, and Morrissey, combining close readings with the application of theoretical frameworks interrogating the implications of literary traditions on later writers (especially when the writers are temporally and culturally close), giving particular consideration to gender and feminist politics. It explores a variety of different critical truisms applied to the poetic generations that precede the younger poets and identifies both compliance and divergences from the contemporary Northern Irish canon. In doing so, this study simultaneously illuminates the frailties of the popular, overwhelmingly male, tradition, particularly as regards to representations of women, and provides direction for studies of post-millennial Northern Irish poetry.