How do they hang from the nation? On Epic Poetry at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century
#08
HOW DO THEY HANG
FROM THE NATION?
ON EPIC POETRY AT
THE BEGINNING OF
THE TWENTY-FIRST
CENTURY
Helena González Fernández
Centre Dona i Literatura, Universitat de Barcelona
Recommended citation || GONZÁLEZ FERNÁNDEZ, Helena (2013): “How do they hang from the nation? On Epic Poetry at the beginning of the
Twenty-First Century ” [online article], 452ºF. Electronic journal of theory of literature and comparative literature, 8, 13-27, [Consulted on: dd/mm/aa],
< http://www.452f.com/pdf/numero08/08_452f-mono-helena-gonzalez-fernandez-en.pdf>
Ilustration || Paula González
Translation || Ursula Scott
Article || Upon request | Published on: 01/2013
License || Creative Commons Attribution Published -Non commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
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452ºF
Abstract II Can the poet take charge of the “us” without succumbing to a sentimental idea of
community with utopian postponement as its backbone? How can both the cause of women and
that of the inferior nation be simultaneously debated without one of them tending to shadow the
other beneath a totalizing umbrella? How do you construct a non-heroic epic appropriate to a
time when mythic or technique narratives about the origin of a community are no longer possible?
In their books of poems (published in 2000), Chus Pato and Ana Romaní present models which
interrogate the community through the transformation of the epic’s poetic forms so as to question
national identity through sexual difference.
Keywords II Chus Pato I Ana Romaní I epic poetry I feminism I nation I community.
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The classic definition of the epic poem in the West refers to a glorious
account of a hero or heroes’ past deeds recorded in a setting of both
nation and city; in other words, of community and public space - both
distinctly patriarchal and heterosexual. The cultural technologies
involved in producing these key concepts, as is the case with
literature itself, are largely based on the fact that the epic is a genre
that reinforces and extends the power of speech, and is therefore at
the service of an ideology. As one of the genres creating the dominant
discourse, however, the epic was accepted as a leading contributor
to the collective imagination that aims to promote social cohesion
and harmony. It appeals to the essence and to a form of communal
sentimentality that serves as an indicator of the change of paradigm,
in other words how the idea of collective thought is structured and
rendered intelligible.
A common explanation is that this principle of cohesion is produced
by an opposition effect against those other alterities that together
create an impression considered “foreign” or external to the common
story, and establishes an impermeable configuration of the idea of
border (geographical, cultural, racial, ethnic, linguistic ...). However,
there are accepted and naturalized internal alterities, invisible to
one’s own community, or at least passed over as secondary, as
feminist analysis insists on explaining and demonstrating. So this
is a construction process of the subject that creates two alterities:
that of the others, different from us; and that of the (female) others,
different from us (females). And the epic, as a genre whose capacity
for cohesion and social and internal harmony relies largely on the
ritualization of sacrifice, is based then on an accepted logic of the
sacrifice of women.
How do they hang from the nation? On Epic Poetry at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century - Helena González Fernández
452ºF. #08 (2013) 13-27.
0. «que cultivas nos muros restaurados?»
(Ana Romaní)
In her reference study on feminist reinterpretation of the classical
epic, Metamorphoses of Helen, Mihoko Suzuki followed this line of
critical thinking arguing that the stories representing the dominant
communities - in this case let’s take the story of the nation in
Galicia - assert cohesion by attacking those internal alterities. In her
view, those differences that seem more obvious, as well as more
necessary for managing roles in society, would be women and
minorities (Suzuki, 1992: 8). If the traditional conception of the nation
reinforced by the epic as a normative discourse acts according to a
principle of homogeneity, then these texts act as levelers of every
kind of “difference”. Even in the case of emerging national tales, in
which the definition of us against the others is more visible and better
defined, it is clear that a distancing operates between the us / others
and us (women) / others (women). This separation is a response
to an accepted logic of the “sacrifice” of women who are part of the
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Yet this difference or distance is a constitutive factor in definitions of
the community developed in the second half of the twentieth century,
and it is considered a constituent figure of the common idea (Birulés,
2012). From this point of view, the internal differences cease to be
considered as an undervalued or irrelevant stroke, and mechanisms
to alter and transform the homogenizing story to include these
formative differences are put in place. For this reason, feminist
rewritings of the epic are an indicator of the negotiation of gender
roles. Their aim focused on denaturing and countering the internal
difference being understood as otherness. Thus, “esta reescritura
que hace que el reloj vuelva a empezar de cero” (Pato, 2004: 116),
reveals and demolishes the mechanisms that control and exclude
women.
Perhaps this is the way the rewritings of Antigone, Medusa or
Penelope should be understood: affirmative and exemplary figures
to contemporaneity. Likewise the rereadings practised on the female
representations that underpinned the inherited discourse of the
nation but were deprived of their emancipatory capacity before being
included in the hegemonic narrative. A little-known and striking case in
point would be the figure of “la viuda de vivo”, a fundamental and even
foundational representation of the nation speech in Galicia. Created
by Rosalia de Castro in Book V of Follas novas, this figure became
one of the metaphors that best represented the injustice suffered by
the nation and that turned it, consequently, into a community wounded
by migration and poverty. As we read in the text, (not in the prologue
- a paratext with different intentions to the ones that can be found
in the poems), the “viuda de vivo” is a lonely woman endowed with
desire and subjectivity, though never allowed to become a heroine.
Through the poems, an agency capacity, which the female metaphors
of the nation lack, gains ground. However, the hegemonic discourse
of the nation appropriated this figuration through the mechanisms of
rewriting and reinterpretation according to the ideological patriarchal
codes that structure the nation. By modifying her body (making her
How do they hang from the nation? On Epic Poetry at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century - Helena González Fernández
452ºF. #08 (2013) 13-27.
community, in other words, their confinement in roles an (...truncated)
