La traducción literaria como máscara: aproximaciones a las Poesías Líricas de Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda

Abstract

In the context of the modernization of the Cuban and Spanish cultural fields, around the middle of the nineteenth century, romanticism offered Cuban and Spanish women writers an opportunity to express themselves as subjects. However, confronted with the reluctance of the literary and cultural institutions to include them, they proceeded to develop various strategies to legitimize their literary work. Through the inclusion in her poetry of more or less free translations of various canonical romantic poets, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda uses translation as a mask with which she can access discursive spaces related to the public sphere, legitimize women’s poetic activity, inscribe herself in a recognizable tradition, appropriate the literary fame of the translated authors, and display her virtuosity. In this way, she endowed her own poetry with authority. Through the modifications she makes to the translated poems and under the aegis of these canonical poets she is thus able to establish a feminine lyric subject and advocate for the inclusion of women in all aspects of the literary field.