“I only know I must”: Transfiguring Irish Shame in Paula Meehan’s “Troika”

Abstract

In the Romantic tradition of the lyric described by Hegel, Paula Meehan’s “Troika” offers a transfiguration of Irish shame. Situating Irish shame against the background of systemic inequalities in the Irish state, Meehan engages the personal materials of her life in order to collaborate with the reader to transform them: from the stuff of shame, to that of dignity. Linking Hegelian transfiguration to Meehan’s transformative impulse, this essay frames “Troika” as a “national lyric”: one that functions to betray Ireland as a site where the contradictions of liberal capital have exacerbated the shameful politics of Church and State.