The feminine, or 'Woman,' was one of the main inspirations in Modernismo's expression, and the still current exclusion of women poets from this movement's canon is contrary to its own foundational concepts of innovation, rupture and the importance of personal expression. This book examines the philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of Modernismo to show that there were indeed women who expressed beauty, broke with tradition and, in their search for a female Modernista voice, were innovative. Concentrating primarily on three Cuban women who lived and worked around the turn of the nineteenth-century: Mercedes Matamoros (1851-1906); Nieves Xenes (1859-1915); and Juana Borrero (1878-1896), the study's perspectives include the female voice-as-gap, the gap as woman (the presence of absence), women's presence in the historical present, and how these women did speak in their own voice, and on topics considered to be modernista - and feminine - such as art, love and beauty, thus creating a signifying space that was, in fact, just as (or perhaps more) innovative than many of the canonized (male) poets of Modernismo.
