The Poetic Body in the Literary Production of Uruguayan Women Writers: Between Female Sensuality and Masculine Dismemberment, a Rewriting of Gender Imaginaries

Abstract

At the beginning of the XX century, in Uruguay, women poets use literary space to rewrite socio-literary norms. Their poetic enunciation is constructed as a counter-voice of to a disciplinary society and hegemonic cultural referents. Poetry then turns into a space of liberation of the word and reappropriation of the body for women authors. Beyond writing about desire, penetrating the reader into their intimacy and inviting them to explore feminine senses, women poets poetically dismember the masculine subject. This creative process serves their poetics, their sensuality and their sexuality. Moreover, the corporeal writing process of women poets allows us to examine their creative power and its implications for their identity as women in society, as well as for their position in the literary field as female writers. Their works have a socio-literary and metaliterary dimension that we cannot ignore when studying the poems, and which also constitutes the originality of these books. In this article, through an analysis of poetry collections by Luisa Luisi and Delmira Agustini, we will examine the staging of feminine and masculine bodies in the texts of Uruguayan women poets as a rewriting of power and gender relations in early twentieth-century Uruguayan society. Therefore, we will study these texts not only as fictional works, but also as imaginative creations with social implications.