‘She – nature, woman, Goddess’: mythic, ethical and poetic feminist discourse in Margaret Atwood’s ‘Marsh Languages’ and Luce Irigaray’sIn the Beginning She Was

This manuscript pairs Margaret Atwood’s poem ‘Marsh Languages’ with Luce Irigaray’s recent philosophical text In the Beginning She Was. By doing so, an important conceptual resonance emerges between two texts on status of loss a maternal language and more broadly founding Mother at origins Western thought. Advancing feminist poetics ethics maternal, its roots in nature, Atwood works are odds enlightened our western masculine time, which seeks to disinherit or uproot itself. appeal her reverberates argument Was, is that it necessary for philosophy return marshes, so speak, Presocratic philosopher-poets order discern how logic truth (via male master-disciple) formed, consequently discredited covered over, ‘she – woman, Goddess’. Engaging Greek myth (Hesiod’s Muses, Plato’s cave mother-daughter duo Persephone-Demeter), as poet Irigaray philosopher interrogate contest patriarchal tradition, erasure Goddess’, suggest ethical implications this silencing forgetting have led corrupt, destructive crisis-level relations, e.g. humans, humans gods nature.