Sharman, Adam

Poetry and Poetics of Cesar Vallejo the Fourth Angle of the Circle

1997 0-7734-8461-2
The collection draws on both contemporary and traditional poetics, keeping to the fore the need to respect the difficulty and hermeticism of the poet's writing. The volume reassesses Vallejo's oeuvre in the light of contemporary theories of literature, bringing together perspectives informed by feminist, postcolonial and poststructuralist theory. It also pursues more traditional approaches, in relation to metaphor, socialism, and Northrop Frye's notion of the Promethean furnace. “. . . Sharman’s fine collection of essays deals more with ways of reading, responding to and thinking about a seemingly hermetic form of writing. Sharman’s own qualities of theoretical rigour a sensitive reading mark the bringing together of these essays, which employ a ‘mixture’ of methodologies or strategies to examine a poetic corpus which is itself characterized by ‘mixture,’ hybridity and the transformational. . . . All in all, then, an impressive volume which consistently reflects upon the poetic sign in a way which actually teases apart hermetic closure in a fruitful and indeed meaningful way.” – Bulletin of Hispanic Studies