Archaic Modernism and Spanish Poetry, 1898-1975
Open Access
- Author:
- Jensen, Max F
- Graduate Program:
- Comparative Literature
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 02, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Jonathan Paul Eburne, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Jonathan Paul Eburne, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Thomas Oliver Beebee, Committee Member
Nicolas L Fernandez-Medina, Committee Member
Mary Elizabeth Barnard, Outside Member - Keywords:
- Archaism
Peninsular Spanish
Poetry
Spain
Modernism
Lorca
Cirlot
García Nieto
Millán
Campal - Abstract:
- Archaic Modernism examines the role that long-standing discourses of Spain’s cultural belatedness play in the complex character of its modern poetry through the Franco Era. While commentators from the first-century histories of Pliny the Elder, to the early twentieth-century proclamations of futurist F.T. Marinetti, Spain has been marked as outmoded, oppressive, and culturally obsolete, this dissertation challenges that Spain’s supposed archaism—a term I employ to gather the various stereotypes regarding Spain’s backwardness—has had an entirely negative effect on its cultural production. Instead, I argue that many modern poets engage in complex rewritings of the past that form the basis of an active and engaged aesthetic, inspiring experimental forms and critical perspectives that challenge the institutions they appropriate. While the use of primitive, primordial, and traditional motifs is a common feature to many canonical writers and artists of the modernist period across Europe and the Anglophone world, Spain exhibits a complex relationship to the past given its perennial marginalization as a belated nation. This special relationship to the suspect ideologies of the past allows us to reconsider the role that Spain played in the development of a broader European modernism. Furthermore, examining the continual debates within Spain about the relationship of its past and its literary culture, also shows us how poets consciously worked to recuperate certain truths, expressions, and inquiries associated with its archaic institutions as a means to establish a national cultural identity resistant to the marginalizing views of a hegemonic Northern European culture. Following this, I examine several Spanish poets who focused on spiritual notions such as irrationality, mysticism, and care for the suffering—ideas opposed to what they saw as an abhorrent Northern European, “protestant” modernization that had alienated human life through its rationalized quest for economic progress and material comforts. My focus on the role of archaism in Spanish poetry through the Civil War through the end of the Franco Era also highlights the work of several poets little-known poets such as José García Nieto, Juan Eduardo Cirlot, Fernando Millán, and Julio Campal.