Florbela Espanca and the notions of modern poetry

Abstract

Florbela Espanca’s poetry is largely absent from much of the debate on modernity in Portuguese literature. This is because her verses seem to go against certain expectations of what is considered modern. This lack of alignment between her work and a modernity paradigm may provide an opportunity to reassess and historicize the very notions of modernism and modernity in Portuguese literature. By apparently not fitting into the current discourse on modernism and modernity, Florbela’s poetry ends up unsettling the very idea of the modern or, in other words, disrupting the concept of what is considered modern. This article discusses these topics, examining the author’s verses for strategies of enunciation and modes of subjectivity in female authorship.