The body is possible: a reading of eroticism in the poetry of Paula Tavares

Abstract

This article revolves around Paula Tavares’s poetic, author of Ritos de passagem, literary work that constitutes as initial mark, published in 1985. Angolan, born in Huíla, she brings, as the central theme, the woman’s body and its eroticism, a bias that trangresses the costums. The poems, which were published along her six books, are the essencial elements to this text, manly the ones that mention the female’s body and the erotic, and those that contributes with a way of reading the gender questions as well. Guided by Hélène Cixou’s theory, in The laugh of the Medusa (1976), we propose that there is a feminine authors in Paula Tavares’s literature so that we could verify the elements that rise in this written. Therefore, we investigate how the erotic shows in Paula Tavares’s work and the ways it contributes to the reflection about gender questions in the history of human society. To deepen the analysis of the body and eroticism, we use, with more emphasis, the theoretical collaborations of Corpos reconfigurados (2000), by Elisabeth Grosz; Que corpo é esse? O corpo no imaginário feminino (2007), by Elódia Xavier; O erotismo (2014), by Georges Bataille; A dupla chama: amor e erotismo (1914), by Octavio Paz; Sister outsider: essays and speeches (1984), by Audre Lorde. This research is methodologically bibliographic and analytical.