RE(CREATION) OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD IN THE ARGENTINIAN PENITENTIARY POETRY (1976-1983)

Abstract

This article tries to make people know about a part of the penitentiary poetry written by political prisoners in the prisons of the last Argentinean dictatorship, between 1976 and 1983. It would seem particularly interesting to analyze the reason why poetry was picked as the genre of choice in order to convey the sensations that were generated by the authors' state of imprisonment. We propose to deal with the way in which the poets considered the poetry as a resistance weapon where they expressed their craving for freedom in poetry, recreating the outside world which represented an unlimited source of desires. Thus, on the one hand, we will analyse the way in which this craving for an unreachable freedom expressed itself, and on the other hand, we will see how it reflected itself through the image of each poet's native village. To conduct this analysis, we believe it is important to consider these texts in the light of two perspectives: literary and anthropological. On the one hand, we will rely on interviews of the authors; on the other hand, we will look at the available scholarship on testimonial literature.