Against Ulro: On the Creation of Poetic Space in the Work of Delmira Agustini, Alejandra Pizarnik and Marosa di Giorgio

Poetry is the language of subversion. It is a linguistic mode where rules are broken and foundations are shaken, where reality twists and changes its shape, where metaphors startle and confound us. Looking at the work of Southern Cone writers Delmira Agustini (1886-1914), Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-1972) and Marosa di Giorgio (1932-2004), this dissertation explores the ways in which poetry becomes a discourse of resistance. I argue that these writers, though traditionally considered apolitical, have created a discourse that is actually politically charged. Drawing extensively on literary theorist Maurice Blanchot's The Space of Literature, I argue that all three poets seek contact with a "space of knowledge" of an ultimate reality, refusing to abandon their quest even as it proves unrealizable. Through this search, all three poets subsequently create a "space of resistance" that subverts the epistemic structures of their social context. Whether or not these authors intended for their work to make a political statement lies beyond the scope of this investigation and, in my view, has little bearing on the outcome. Because the social structures in which they lived - technocracy and rational utilitarianism during Agustini's era and dictatorship in Pizarnik's and di Giorgio's - are inherently oppressive, the three poets' determination to go beyond them is indeed a political act.Ph.D.2016-11-30 00:00:0