Preserving the Status Quo?: Periodical Codes in The Bell and Envoy during the Mid-Twentieth Century

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is among the first to read two key Irish literary periodicals—The Bell and Envoy—to highlight how male literary inheritance, homosocial bonding, and subtle discouragement combined to marginalize women poets from mainstream Irish literature during the mid-twentieth century. Close analysis will be employed to uncover the homosocial, highly gendered language and “compositional codes” found in these magazines, sometimes through conscious decisions and sometimes through unconscious manifestations of ambient normative assumptions about proper gender roles/spheres, contributed to the mainstream exclusion of Irish women poets during this important and often forgotten period in Irish literary history.