Abstract

"Una poetica femenina-feminista" is a study of women's writing and sexual differences based on French, Italian, and Anglo-American feminist thought and exemplified through the poetry of Ana Maria Fagundo. The dissertation focuses on the inscription of the feminine body in the text, as well as the re-visionary/revolutionary poetic strategies utilized to create an expressive system which includes women in discourse. ;As feminist theoreticians, philosophers, and poets reveal in their works, the inscription of the body takes place at the literal, metaphorical, and symbolic levels transforming the written texts into a myriad of infinite and multiple meanings--both unexpressed and inexpressible--which depict the reality of woman as subject. The recurrence of erotic imagery associate with the act of poetic creation results in the inevitable fusion of artistic creativity and erotic celebration from which Fagundo develops a complex writing system in order to express woman as self and as artist. By so doing, she creates a new socio-symbolic order which codifies and symbolizes women's experience in the world. ;The primordial and engendering power of the world is often celebrated and compared to that of the female who, in turn, is perceived as its origin. The intimate relationship between poet and poetry, the intentional ambiguity and fragmentation of both the poetic word and the poetic persona, transforms the woman from muse into artist, from object into subject, and accounts for denial of ever recurrent split body/spirit, life/art. Thus, the relationship between author and poetic word results in a mutually desirable and creative exchange. ;Two other aspects within the feminine body/textual body concept are outlined in this thesis. One is the manifestation of a matrilineal discourse which revalues the mother-daughter relationship. The artist embarks on an ethical, poetical and symbolic project, conducive of the recognition and restitution of the mother's ouvre and the mother's gift , by means of introducing female genealogies and mediating structures in the feminine. The other aspect deals with the creation of utopic spaces for women in culture through art. Such poetic utopias transcend the confines of patriarchal order, safeguarding the author from scission or ontological exile. ;The textual body , feminine body , and geographical body , as well as their couterparts poem-woman-land, are three fundamental spaces through which the symbolic weight of the the feminine is represented. They are also a point of departure in Fagundo's emotional and intellectual poetic quest which coincides with Contemporary Feminist thought in its attempt to enhance the presence of women both in art and in the world