Delmira Agustini y Gilka Machado: La voz erótica en la poesía de liberación femenina en el siglo XX

Lais Francis Ribeiro, Purdue University

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the erotic content in the poetry of the two Latin American poets Delmira Agustini and Gilka Machado, as well as understand and analyze the female erotic discourse in the literature of the beginning of the XX century. Because of the erotic tone of their poetry, society blamed their poetry of being obscene, and throughout the years, these two writers were almost ignored by some critics who considered them of inferior quality. Nevertheless, a close analysis of the erotic poems of both writers denounces rather an erotic voice that struggles for the empowerment of the female body. After an introduction of the subject in chapter one, the second chapter is a feminist theoretical approach to eroticism. The third chapter discusses Agustini’s erotic poetry and her anticipation of Hélène Cixous’ ideas. Chapter four moves toward Machado’s poems and her multivocal erotic discourse that sings the female body as well as other problems that less privileged women and men suffer in Brazilian society at the beginning of the XX century; Gilka Machado anticipated, as Agustini did, ideas that would come later on, represented mainly by Luce Irigaray. The result of this research is presented in the fifth chapter with a comparison of the erotic poetry of both poets and a presentation of the different bias that a female erotic voice could take in the context of Agustini’s and Machado’s society.

Degree

M.A.

Advisors

Tillis, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Modern literature|Latin American literature

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