O lago da lua: a poesia de tradição oral africana de Paula Tavares

Abstract

This dissertation presents a study on the process of construction of the Angolan cultural identity through the analysis of the poems of the book O lago da Lua, written by Ana Paula Tavares, analyzing how the culture of the oral tradition is renified in the poetic language of the work, such as collective memory and ancestry are represented and how the poetic female subject expresses his subjectivity and his relationship with the tradition and society to which she belongs. The analysis starts from the discussion of how cultural identity should be understood in the context of contemporary Africa and then present how oral tradition is present as a determining part of African cultural identity and how the universe of orality is re-signified in written literature. Thus, Chapter I discusses the theoretical questions about the fragmentation of identities in postmodernity and how this fragmented identity can be interpreted in the context of African countries. Chapter II presents the universe of the African oral tradition and how it is re-signified in the literary writing of the African writers. Chapter III presents the cultural and social context in which Paula Tavares is inserted, producing a poetics engaged in representing and enunciating the desires and longings of the Angolan woman. In O lago da lua, Paula Tavares, besides denouncing the cruelty of the war for independence, puts us before the culture of the ethnic groups of the south of Angola, through the re-signification of the traditions and myths in the context of a newly independent nation and the questioning of its traditions, especially in the way the Angolan woman is treated. The development of theoretical discussion and the analysis of poems occurred in the light of theoretical and analytical precepts proposed by Stuart Hall (2006), Homi Bhabha (2013), Kwame Anthony Appiah (1997), Francisco Noa (2015), Hampaté Bá (2010) , Ana Mafalda Leite (2014), Éduard Glissant (2005), Maria Nazareth Fonseca (2015), Inocência Mata (2000, 2001, 2016), among others. The results show that through oral resources, Ana Paula Tavares reinscribes the memory of the Angolan people, leading us to reflect on the devastation of the war and the condition of the Angolan woman.