Ana Luísa Amaral’s 'The Genealogy of Love'

In order to survey the impact of 'The Genealogy of Love' and offer a revisionary, feminist reading of Ana Luísa Amaral's work, I trace the feminist implications of her poetics by reclaiming for the everyday world of history and politics what seem to be private and subjective moments through which Amaral is able to express and develop her poetic vision on love. I analyze Amaral's development of a solid feminist theoretical perspective by linking her response to wider literary and cultural contexts (Camões, Petrarch, and Dante). In placing 'The Genealogy of Love' at the centre of feminist critique, I aim to bring Amaral's work into direct alignment with the methodological discursive frameworks of both feminism and psychoanalysis. In the continuing debate over the relationship between Amaral's aesthetics and her politics, I suggest a serious examination of the concept of femininity to be found at the heart of her writing. The critical impact of this project may then be assessed on two levels. First, it offers a new perspective on Amaral's text by consciously privileging the interdisciplinary connection between the notion of love and feminism. This duality, in the strictest sense of the word, grounds my discussion of Amaral's poetry. Second, in downplaying the complexity between gender and poetry, I aim to highlight the ways in which Amaral's progressive, experimental poetic vision on love may suggest an original formulation of femininity (its interrogation, its description, and its value).