Reviewers have celebrated this important volume as the first comprehensive critical appraisal of the 1997 Nobel Prize laureate for literature. The volume features an introduction, an extensive annotated bibliography, an index, and Aleixandre's Nobel Prize acceptance lecture.

Reviewers have celebrated this important volume as the first comprehensive critical appraisal of the 1997 Nobel Prize laureate for literature. The volume features an introduction, an extensive annotated bibliography, an index, and Aleixandre's Nobel Prize acceptance lecture.

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

"Twentieth-century poetry engages in a highly self-conscious meditation on the nature of poetic language. Spanish poetry, however, has sometimes been considered an exception to this tendency. This book, with its focus on linguistic self-reflexivity, refutes the notion that major Spanish poets such as Jorge Guillen and Vicente Aleixandre are theoretically naive creators. In a series of nuanced readings, Jonathan Mayhew demonstrates the extent to which modern Spanish poets are conscious of their linguistic medium." "Previous books on Spanish poetry published in English have been more limited in scope, usually including poets of a single "generation." The Poetics of Self-Consciousness is the first to study well-known writers of the earlier part of the century along with more recent poets such as Jose Angel Valente, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Jose Maria Alvarez, and Juan Lamillar. Interpreting poetic texts written from the 1920s through the 1980s, Mayhew is able to trace the evolving function of literary self-consciousness in Spanish poetry while remaining attentive to the differences among writers of the same historical moment. The modernist poets of the earlier part of the century are preoccupied by the problem of literary mimesis: the representation of reality through language. In the postwar years, poets turned their attention to the social and ethical dimensions of poetic language. The postmodernists of more recent decades, finally, are increasingly concerned with their own belatedness with respect to cultural traditions of the past." "Critics hailed Jonathan Mayhew's first book, Claudio Rodriguez and the Language of Poetic vision, as an "enlightening and timely book on perhaps Spain's greatest living poet," and "a signal first effort from a critic with high scholarly standards and a penetrating insight into contemporary poetry." With The Poetics of Self-Consciousness: Twentieth-Century Spanish Poetry, readers will discover another probing study of other modern and postmodern Spanish poets."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Facts On File Companion to World Poetry : 1900 to the Present is a comprehensive introduction to 20th and 21st-century world poets and their most famous, most distinctive, and most influential poems.

Some 750 alphabetically-arranged entries provide insights into recent cultural and political developments within Spain, including the cultures of Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque country. Coverage spans from the end of the Civil War in 1939 to the present day, with emphasis on the changes following the demise of the Franco dictatorship in 1975. Entries range from shorter, factual articles to longer overview essays offering in-depth treatment of major issues. Culture is defined in its broadest sense. Entries include: *Antonio Gaudí * science * Antonio Banderas * golf * dance * education * politics * racism * urbanization This Encyclopedia is essential reading for anyone interested in Spanish culture. It provides essential cultural context for students of Spanish, European History, Comparative European Studies and Cultural Studies.