Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15291/csi.4321
Feminist Reading of Marija Čudina’s Poetry: Emotional Rupture in the Lyrical Subject Stemming From the Transition of Childhood Into Adulthood
Andrea Anđelinić
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Philosophy, Postgraduate doctoral studies in Literature, Theatrology and dramatology, filmology, musicology and cultural studies
Abstract
This article analyzes Marija Čudina’s Nestvarne djevojčice [Imaginary Girls] book of poetry (1959) and focuses on re-reading the themes and motifs in her poetry from a feminist perspective with consideration of the relationship of the lyrical subject of the poems to issues of gender, sexuality, and reproduction. Starting with the issue of women’s writing and the status of women’s literature in the Croatian (as well as Western) literary canon, one of the aims of the text is to encourage a feminist re-evaluation of Croatian women’s poetry that will not stem from well-established analytical categories but will propose new perspectives of reading and analysis which critics and historians of literature have so far overlooked. With this in mind, this interpretation emphasises the experiences of the lyrical subject positioned in-between childhood and adulthood, a position that causes the subject to existentially and emotionally split and alienate. The focus of the research is to interpret the emotional state of this subject and its understanding of experiences of gender determination and gender identity as a discursive position that is assigned to each subject precisely during the period of growing up. A careful analysis of several poems from the collection will help shed light not only on poetical relevance of Čudina’s poetry in the context of contemporary Croatian poetry, but also on the fact that it is precisely the subject’s specific experience of gender and emotional processing that makes this book of poetry especially valuable. This re-evaluation is an attempt to finally recognize Čudina as an important part of the Croatian literary canon as well as counter-canon.
Keywords
body; Croatian female poetry; emotion; gender; Marija Čudina
Hrčak ID:
312387
URI
Publication date:
28.12.2023.
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