OVERVIEW

The poetry of Ana Paula Tavares: translation, postcolonial issues, poetics

AIMS AND CONTENT

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

This course aims to explore the poetry of Ana Paula Tavares, one of the most influential voices in contemporary Angolan literature, whose work lies at the intersection of memory, history, identity, and reflections on the female body. Through the reading and analysis of a selection of poems, the course will provide students with the critical tools necessary to understand the specific features of Angolan literature written in Portuguese and its relationship with the legacies of colonialism, local cultural traditions, and processes of national identity formation. Particular attention will be devoted to the interplay between orality and writing, the representation of landscape and memory, and the central role of female perspectives in redefining historical and cultural narratives in contemporary Angola. Ana Paula Tavares’s work will also be situated within the broader framework of African literatures in Portuguese and the theoretical debates developed within postcolonial studies.

PREREQUISITES

There are no specific requirements

TEACHING METHODS

Lectures are delivered in Italian and will take place in person. The course also includes a number of seminar-style sessions and lectures given by academics from other universities, as well as book presentations featuring writers and translators.

Attendance is not compulsory and is not monitored, but it is strongly recommended, particularly for those who have no prior knowledge of Portuguese-speaking literature.

Students who have duly submitted a certificate of disability, specific learning difficulties (SLD) or other special educational needs are advised to contact both the course coordinator, Prof. Sara Dickinson (sara.dickinson@unige.it), and the lecturer [or the lecturer] at the start of the course to agree on teaching and assessment methods which, whilst respecting the course objectives, take into account individual learning styles and provide appropriate compensatory measures.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The first part of the course will focus on the analysis of the author’s poetics, with particular reference to the collections that have established her international literary reputation. The close reading of her texts will make it possible to examine the ways in which Ana Paula Tavares’s poetry reworks Angola’s colonial and precolonial past, recovering forms of knowledge, symbols, and cultural practices that have often been marginalized by official historiography. Within this perspective, the course will address key issues in postcolonial theory, including the representation of alterity, the construction of cultural memory, the dynamics of symbolic resistance, and the relationship between language and power. Special attention will be paid to the linguistic specificities of Angolan Portuguese, considered not merely as a peripheral variant of European Portuguese but as a creative space in which lexical, syntactic, and semantic influences from local African languages converge with Angola’s historical and social experiences. The analysis of the author’s linguistic choices will demonstrate how these elements contribute to the construction of a distinctive and autonomous poetic voice.

The second part of the course will take the form of a poetry translation workshop, in which students will engage directly with selected texts by Ana Paula Tavares. Through individual and collaborative exercises, participants will address the main theoretical and practical challenges involved in translating contemporary poetry, with particular emphasis on the issues raised by translating texts originating in postcolonial contexts into English. The workshop will provide an opportunity to reflect on the translation strategies required to convey the symbolic density, rhythm, and cultural nuances of the author’s writing, as well as the difficulties involved in rendering the specific features of Angolan Portuguese in relation to European Portuguese. Students will be encouraged to engage with topics such as the translatability of culturally embedded imagery, the treatment of oral forms of expression, the presence of lexical elements derived from African languages, and the role of the translator as a mediator between languages, cultures, and historical memories. In this way, the workshop is intended as a space for critical experimentation, where translation becomes a privileged tool for deepening the understanding of Ana Paula Tavares’s poetry and, more broadly, of African literatures written in Portuguese.

Inizio modulo

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ana Paula Tavares, Ritos de Passagem. Luanda: União dos Escritores Angolanos, 1985.
Ana Paula Tavares ,Dizes-me coisas amargas como os frutos. Lisboa: Caminho, 2001.

Ana Paula Tavares , A cabeça de Salomé. Lisboa: Caminho, 2004..

AA.VV, Postcolonialismo. Roma: Meltemi.

Further reading material will be provided by the lecturer during the lectures

The reading list is indicative and will be discussed with the lecturer during the module. Non-attending students are asked to contact the lecturer to agree on any changes to the reading list.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

LESSONS

LESSONS START

The course will start in October

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy