The Twilight of the Avant-Garde Spanish Poetry 1980–2000 / Jonathan Mayhew.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mayhew, Jonathan, 1960-

Series:

Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone cultures.

Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone cultures

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Spanish poetry--20th century--History and criticism.

Spanish poetry.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (179 pages) : digital, PDF files(s).

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2009.

Language Note:

English, Italian.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Twilight of the Avant-Garde: Spanish Poetry 1980-2000 addresses the central problem of contemporary Spanish poetry: the attempt to preserve the scope and ambitiousness of modernist poetry at the end of the twentieth century. Jonathan Mayhew first offers a critical analysis of the called 'poetry of experience' of Luis Garcia Montero, a tendency that is based on the supposed obsolescence of the modernist poetics of the first half of the century. While the 'poetry of experience' presents itself as a progressive attempt to 'normalise' poetry, to make it accessible to the common reader, Mayhew views it as a reactionary move that ultimately reduces poetry to the status of a minor genre. The author then turns his attention to the poetry of Jose Angel Valente and Antonio Gamoneda, whose poetry embodies the continuation of modernism, and to the work of younger women poets of the last two decades of the twentieth century. Throughout this controversial and provocative book, Mayhew challenges received notions about the value of poetic language in relation to the larger culture and society. It turns out that the cultural ambition of modernist poetics is still highly relevant even in an age in which more cynical views of literature seem prevalent. Ultimately, Mayhew writes as an advocate for the survival of more challenging and ambitious modes of poetic writing in the postmodern age.

Contents:

Part one. The avant-garde and its discontents : the place of poetry in contemporary Spanish culture

Aesthetic conservatism in recent Spanish poetry

Three apologies for poetry

Poetry, politics, and power

Part Two. Valente, Gamoneda, and the "Generation of the 1950s"

In search of ordinary language : revisiting the "Generation of the 1950s"

Jose Ángel Valente's Lectura de Paul Celan : translation and the Heideggerian tradition in Spain

Antonio Gamoneda's Libro de los venenos : the limits of genre

Part Three. Women poets of the 1980s and 1990s

Gender under erasure (Amparo Amorós, Luisa Castro)

Desire deferred : Ana Rossetti's Punto umbrío

Concha García : the end of epiphany

Lola Velasco's El movimiento de las flores and the limits of criticism.

Notes:

Series statement found on jacket.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [169]-174) and index.

CC BY-NC-ND

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781789624229

OCLC:

1138500257

Access Restriction:

Open Access Unrestricted online access