Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

A Nest For The Soul: The Trope Of Solitude In Three Early Modern Discalced Carmelite Nun-Poets, Stacey Schlau

Languages & Cultures Faculty Publications

For early modern Discalced Carmelite nun-poets, solitude remains tied to the paradoxical equation of life to death and death to life so famously parsed by St. Teresa. This essay examines poems by María de San Alberto (1568-1640), Ana de la Trinidad (1577-1613), and Gregoria Francisca de Santa Teresa (1653-1736) exploring the possibilities of creating and maintaining solitude while embarked on a quest for mystical union. Outstanding practitioners of the Teresian poetic tradition, the Founding Mother’s religious and literary example allowed them the freedom to communicate with their religious sisters and subsequent readers, and thereby establish religious community through writing.

Póliza: A Bilingual Anthology Of Postmodern Peninsular Spanish Women Poets, Jacqueline Osborn

Honors Projects

Within this project I endeavor to translate a series of poems from seven postmodern female Spanish poets, exploring the challenges and idiosyncrasies of not only the migration between languages, but those specifically between Spanish and English as well as those particular to poetry translation. Of course, there are inherent limits to this process. Regarding the differences between English and Spanish, such difficulties as the presence of naturally reflexive verbs, neutral pronouns, more efficient nominalization of adjectives, and the greater presence of the subjunctive tense in Spanish arise. Respecting the problem of poetry, the structure, rhythm, and even the tone of …

Review Of "Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry", Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

"From the center and edges of the vast and diverse landscape of contemporary Mexico, whose 'boundaries are largely the accidents of history,' the poets in Reversible Monuments ponder the limits of consciousness and search for meaning(s)."

Motherland, Melanie Joy Mignucci

Senior Projects Spring 2016

A novella about Puerto Rico.

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

"Poetry In Translation", The University Of Maine School Of Performing Arts

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

"Poetry in Translation," is a public lecture by Dr. John Burns. The lecture is scheduled for Wednesday, September 16th, 2015 at 4pm in Hill Auditorium. Dr. Burns will also meet with classes in the English Department and the Department of Modern Languages and will narrate "The Cloths of Heaven," a Faculty Series Concert of song settings of W.B. Yeats' poetry on Friday, September 18th in Minsky Hall.

Juan Bautista Aguirre (1725-1786) Y Los Orígenes De La Nación Ecuatoriana, Alex Paul Lima

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how mid-eighteenth century notions of patria, nación, and Nuestra América predate latter nation-building constructs, particularly at the turn of the 19th century. Benedict Anderson's (1991) assertion that Spanish-American Creoles attained a sense of belonging to an "imagined community", towards the end of the 18thcentury,fails to take into account the limitations of print capitalism due to extremely low literacy rates and rare access to the printing press. This dissertation focuses on the life and work of Jesuit poet, orator, and philosopher Juan Bautista Aguirre (Daule [Ecuador], 1725-Tivoli [Italy], 1786). His poems and sermons, …

Escribir Desde Una Geografía De Desarraigo Y Extrañamiento: La Poesía De Julia Otxoa, Estrella Cibreiro

Spanish Department Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Punto Ciego, Adelmar Alvin Ramirez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Ciudad Juarez, another type of history shown through newspaper articles and headlines, going against the stereotypical values of violence and feminicides.

On The Origin And Future Of Poetry: Notes Towards An Investigation, Carlos Aguasaco

Publications and Research

An exploration on the historical and material conditions that allowed the emergence of metaphors and poetry alongside language. This article analyzes the historical relation between poetry and technology across history. It discusses the so-called ontological crisis of poetry and opens the conversation on its future.

La Obra Poetica De Jose De Jesus Dominguez Estudio Preliminar, Texto Y Notas, Eric Samuel Quinones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The end of the nineteenth century witnessed an esthetic renewal in Latin American literature. The movement later dubbed modernismo would usher in a profound shift in the ars poetica of Spanish prose and poetry. Yet this revolution did not spread like fire; it coexisted with, and unevenly replaced, earlier artistic notions. José de Jesús Domínguez, a poet and medical doctor who spent most of his life in the city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, was one of the earliest exponents of this trend. His evolution from his beginnings as a romantic poet, his encounter with the French Parnassians, and his early …

Ferradáns Publishes Bilingual Collection Of Spanish Poet's Work, Kim Hill

News and Events

No abstract provided.

Poesía E Historicidad En Ernesto Cardenal Y Roberto Fernández Retamar, Alberto David Rivera Vaca

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the meta-poetic and historicist thought in Ernesto Cardenal and Roberto Fernández Retamar’s poetry. The concept these poets have poetry is closely related to the historical moment of their times. They ponder about poetry and its function, poetic thought that is nourished by a historical consciousness. This close relationship between poetry and history inevitably includes sensitivity to the social situation in their respective countries and in Latin America. These poets seek to understand the concrete reality thus coming closer to the truth of things. The study shows that these poets, based on history and poetic thought, assume their …

Mourning For The Future: Poetic Inheritance In Juan Luis Martínez's "La Poesía Chilena", Scott Weintraub

Languages, Literatures & Cultures

No abstract provided.

No Anxiety Of Influence: Ethics In Poetry Retranslation After Analogical Form, Gregary Racz

Faculty of Foreign Languages Publications

No abstract provided.

The Untiring Game, Yrene Santos, Isabel R. Espinal

Isabel R Espinal

These are translations of most, but not all, the poems in the book El incansable juego, by Yrene Santos (Santo Domingo: Editorial Letra Gráfica: 2002). The poems that have not been translated were already translated elsewhere by others, according to the poet.

“La Cara De Luna De Mi Madre”: Nuria Amat’S Revolution In Poetic Language In “Casa De Verano” (1999), David Richter

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Nuria Amat’s 1999 short story “Casa de verano” ‘Summer House’ presents the reader with a sensorial collage of unsettling language and violent images that effectively portray domestic abuse and the difficulty of escaping oppressive environments. The Barcelona writer’s text crosses the generic boundaries of narrative and poetry as her discourse flows freely and irrationally by employing a wide variety of charged poetic devices such as metaphor, metonymy, and antithesis. The story focuses on three orphan children who are prohibited from speaking about their subversive bisexual mother, from reading the few remaining books in the summer house, or from playing with …

The Incertitude Of Language And Life In The Poetry Of Olvido García Valdés, Sharon Keefe Ugalde

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Two of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s formulations serve as guideposts for the analysis of the poetry of García Valdés: the concept of language-game and the Creation Mystic Experience, or seeing the world as a miracle. The paper first considers the language-game in terms of “unbound” or exempt language. The poet, recognizing the metamorphic nature of language, frees it from predetermined cultural content and, most notably, from grammatical rigidity, toying with ambiguity and fluidity through such techniques as juxtaposition, pronoun vagueness and ellipsis. The second part of the study considers the poet’s exploration of the ineffable, which embraces both the astonishment of being …

Beyond The Pale: “Poesía Postpoética” In Agustín Fernández Mallo’S Joan Fontaine Odisea, W. Michael Mudrovic

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In a recent article defining his concept of “poesía postpoética,” Agustín Fernández Mallo chides and challenges his contemporaries for being behind the times. While not completely eschewing more traditional techniques of intertextuality and imagery, Fernández Mallo does stress the need to incorporate scientific and mathematical imagery. His book-length poem, Joan Fontaine Odisea (mi deconstrucción) (2005), exemplifies his “poesía postpoética” in its use of allusions to high and popular culture, and scientific concepts, along different types of discourse, to disrupt the commonplace perception of a unified poetic voice. This article will focus on Joan Fontaine Odisea as a modern poetic sequence …

Migration And The Foreign In Contemporary Spanish Poetry: El Sueño De Dakhla (Poemas De Umar Abass) By Manuel Moya, Debra Faszer-Mcmahon

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Many critical studies have addressed the issue of immigration in contemporary Spanish narrative and film, but far fewer have analyzed this topic within the context of poetry. The representation of immigrant experience in poetic texts is significant not only because poetic works have received less attention, but also because of the significance of poetry within North African and Islamic culture. Manuel Moya’s recent award-winning collection places the question of North African immigration as a central concern. The text purports to offer a compilation of poetry produced by the Western Saharan immigrant Umar Abass, who currently resides in Madrid. The work …

The Song Of Disappearance: Memory, History, And Testimony In The Poetry Of Antonio Gamoneda, Daniel Aguirre-Oteiza

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This essay explores Antonio Gamoneda’s poetry as an Adornian form of testimony. With its enigmatic foregrounding of lies, the book-length poem Descripción de la mentira ‘Description of the Lie’ can be read as a “contradictory testimony” in which the act and memory of witnessing go, as it were, underground—only to resurface, rife with loss, years after Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. Yet the abstruse character of this poetic writing prevents readers from drawing straightforward political truths about Spanish history from the poem. Losses are inscribed in the text catachrestically, as they truly are: losses. Gamoneda’s poetry has been read …

Poetry Wars, Sylvia R. Sherno

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The status of poetry in Spain over the last several decades has provided fodder for a surprisingly contentious dispute, perhaps particularly remarkable for devotees and critics on these shores, where poetry has a limited readership…

“No Es Mi Madre La Tierra” ‘The Earth Is Not My Mother’: Ecology In Gloria Fuertes’S Last Poetry, Douglas K. Benson

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Since the 1930s, Gloria Fuertes’s poetry has attracted listeners and readers to her unique combination of verbal play, witty juxtapositions of erudite and popular sources, and uncanny linguistic virtuosity. Thirteen years after her death in 1998, her popularity continues to grow as new printings of her best-selling books and new editions of her early poetry appear in print. The last book over which she had editorial control, Mujer de verso en pecho (1995) ‘Woman with Verse on her Chest,’ is her most provocative, expanding considerably the thematic range to which she applied her unconventional poetic strategies. One previous thematic element …

Reading Sara Pujol Russell’S Poetry Of Contemplation And Connection, Anita M. Hart

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Sara Pujol Russell’s poetry captures a process of expanding consciousness and personal renewal. Through contemplation and attention to nature, the poet-speaker in her works generates a sense of connection that moves her beyond daily concerns. Pujol’s poetry is both metaphysical and also different in that it resists easy classification and is not representative of mainstream trends. This essay approaches the distinctiveness of Pujol’s work by studying selected poems from her third book of poetry in Spanish, Para decir sí a la carencia, sí a la naranja, al azafrán en el pan (2004) ‘To Say Yes to Lack, Yes to the …

Poetic Vision And (In)Visible Pain In Antonio Méndez Rubio’S Trasluz, Paul Cahill

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Since the 1980s, visibility has played a key role in debates surrounding Spanish poetry. Novísimo ‘very new’ poets have highlighted and explored the instability and uncertainty of the gaze, while poetas de la experiencia ‘poets of experience’ have more readily accepted the visible without questioning it or the mechanisms used to construct it. Poets who entered the literary scene in the mid to late 1990s have also entered this discussion. Antonio Méndez Rubio, the author of twelve poetry collections and numerous critical and theoretical works, is a poet whose work does not fit easily within the categories usually employed to …

In The Heideggerian Tradition: Acontecimiento By Concha García, Martha Lafollette Miller

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Critics Sharon Keefe Ugalde and Tina Escaja have called the poetry of Concha García “enigmatic,” “unique,” and “avant-garde.” Studies of her work to date tend to attribute the fragmentation and discontinuity of her poetic discourse to her rejection of phallologocentric language. While one of her work’s chief concerns is indeed her speaker’s sense of a radical difference and alienation based on gender, her poetry at the same time directs her reader’s attention to more general ontological considerations. Rather than clearly recounting the events of the life of her poetic protagonist, she rejects the distillations and simplifications that linear narration presupposes …

Syntactically Silent Subjects: Luis Muñoz And The Poetry Of Ellipsis, Judith Nantell

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Luis Muñoz (1966) is one of contemporary Spain’s most salient poets. His work has been described as demonstrating a discourse of ellipsis; yet no study has examined in detail his masterful use of syntactic and figurative omission. In fact, even though Muñoz’s published collections to date span two centuries, no single study has been devoted to his decidedly innovative expressivity. His work has been commented on in various panoramic essays considering contemporary poetry published in Spain at this temporal intersection and a number of his poems have been gathered into noteworthy anthologies of this same era. His poetry has been …

El Verso Poderoso: Los Beneficios De La Enseñanza De La Poesía En El Aula De Una Segunda Lengua, Ann Emmerling

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Chilean Cultural Identity: A Case Study Of Contemporary Mapuche Poetry, La Identidad Cultural Chilena: Un Caso De Estudio De La Poesía Mapuche Contemporánea, Christopher Culbertson

Senior Independent Study Theses

The topic is approached in three different manners: hybrid theory, academic perspectives, and poetry analysis. An application of hybrid theory facilitates the understanding of cultural identity within Chile. A discussion by three Chilean professors reveals the important themes of geographic location, generation, and language in both the production and reception of written contemporary Mapuche poetry. An analysis of selected of written Mapuche poetry depicts the unique conceptualizations of identity by contemporary Mapuche poets. As a result, this independent study shows how written contemporary Mapuche poetry is an appropriate indicator of the evolution of Mapuche hybrid identity.

Everything And Nothing : The Poetry Of Hanni Ossott, April Schmidt

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Although Hanni Ossott (1946-2002) is considered a unique voice in Venezuelan poetry, no comprehensive studies of her work have yet been undertaken. This dissertation offers a critical reading of the poetry from her early and mid career, a period that encompasses both her best known and least known work. Ossott is mainly remembered for two books from the middle of her trajectory, Hasta que llegue el día y huyan las sombras and El reino donde la noche se abre. However, the four books leading up to these works have been largely ignored, with critics regarding them as an early, experimental …

Intersecting Axes Of Language And Experience: An Exploration And Translation Of The Work Of Poet Coral Bracho, Maeve Carver

Senior Projects Spring 2011

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.