Medbh McGuckian Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Helen Blakeman

Critical Essay by Helen Blakeman

SOURCE: Blakeman, Helen. “Metaphor and Metonymy in Medbh McGuckian's Poetry.” Critical Survey 14, no. 2 (May 2002): 61-74.

In the following essay, Blakeman studies the role of metaphor and metonymy in McGuckian's poetry with respect to the theories of American linguist Roman Jakobson and French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan on the same topics.

What this essay offers is not a definitive way to read a McGuckian poem, as not only is this an unfeasible task but it would compromise McGuckian's deliberate refusal of a single voiced, univocal reading. Rather, what this essay provides is a consideration of McGuckian's application of metaphor and metonymy in relation to the work of Roman Jakobson and Jacques Lacan, which takes into account the indeterminacy and displacement of meaning that is a predominant feature of her work. Roman Jakobson's study ‘Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances’ led to the formulation of the...
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