Translating poetics: analysing the connections between Violeta Parra’s music, poetry and art

The aim of this thesis is to study the links and relations between the musical, poetic and visual art of the Chilean artist Violeta Parra (1917-1967). While scholarly attention has focused mainly on its poetical output, there has been little research of her interdisciplinary profile, in which context her most important achievement was paradoxically recognized abroad, through her visual work when exhibited interdisciplinarily at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Palais du Louvre. While in Chile her oeuvre struggled for acceptance, in Paris, Parra was praised as a total artist who displayed her poetic language through many art forms. A rigorous analysis of this interdisciplinary profile reveals a significant gap in the current literature which I seek to redress to shed light on a comparative hypothesis regarding interlinked poetics. My analytical standpoint is based upon Parra’s interdisciplinary career, activity and thought which is notable for collecting, researching, creating and promoting Chilean traditional customs as well as her own artwork. While rooted in music studies, this five-chapter thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach drawing from literary studies – specifically from linguistics and literary theory – and art studies. My position on Parra's oeuvre is not to consider each art form separately but consider them as an overall representation, attempting to suggest ways that these different arts can inform each other and converge in new perspectives and knowledge. Thus, taking a historical viewpoint and looking at the main influences, this project tries to outline the main features of Parra's poetical translation from one media to another. The final goal of this thesis is to provide and set another significant dimension of this renowned folk singer-songwriter: Violeta Parra as an interdisciplinary artist.