Nas malhas da espera: o retecimento de Penélope na poesia de Ana Martins Marques

Abstract

This MA thesis presents a revisionist (RICH, 2017) reading of Ana Martins Marques’ poems, included in her first three books, A vida submarina (2009), Da arte das armadilhas (2011), and O livro das semelhanças (2015). The study focuses on the poems that allude to characters of Greek mythology, especially Penelope, present in Homer’s Odyssey, known for the weaving art, and her admired marital fidelity. The first chapter analyses, from the perspective of greek mythology, how the poet raises categories of memory and forgetfulness in her poems, noting how the movement of remembrance and forgetfulness relates to the act of weaving and unweaving the shroud, managed by the queen of Ithaca. In this sense, I highlight discussions proposed by Weinrich (2001) and Eliade (1972). In the second chapter, the original myth and the revised version created by Ana Martins Marques are compared from a feminist perspective (BEAUVOIR, 2016; ORTNER, 2017), as well as considering the contributions of feminist ecocriticism (ALAIMO, 2017; GAARD, 2017), and authors who discuss the silencing of women and issues of female authorship (WOOLF, 1990; GILBERT and GUBAR, 2017). Finally, in the third chapter, I look at the author's poems that allude to Penelope, investigating how the revisionism of myth occurs in her poetics, highliting the subversion of the weaver in the poems, for even confined at home, is able to turn the act of weaving into more than a mere act of waiting, for she manages to transform it into the building of her speech, which drives her through inland seas in endless navigations, between cloths and thoughts, weaving and unweaving her identity every day. In this sense, the analysis of Ana Martins Marques' poetry focuses on the demystifying character of her writing, in which the author rescues traditions, challenging them and giving a renewed look.