Spanish, Catalan and Spanish-American Poetry from Modernismo to the Spanish Civil War: The Hispanic Connection

Compares and evaluates specific landmarks in the history of modern Hispanic literature, with particular reference to modernismo, the avant-garde, surrealism, political and war poetry, and key pure poetry motifs such as self-reflexivity, the Work, essentialism, abstraction and silence. Seeks out the often invisible Hispanic connection linking the work of the Spanish, Catalan and Spanish-American poet in the twentieth century through close readings of selected poems. Makes a plea for a comparative approach in its use of Harold Bloom's theory of the `anxiety of influence.' Gives special attention to Darío's influence on Antonio Machado and Juan Ramón Jiménez; the influence of Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Valéry in the works of Jiménez, Jorge Guillén, Salinas and Charles Riba; and the use of surrealist motifs in selected poems by Lorca, Cernuda, Alberti, Aleixandre, Foix, Rosselló Pòrcel and Octavio Paz.