Ludismo e intertextualidad en la lirica espanola moderna

Abstract

Ludismo e intertextualidad en la lir-ica espanola moderna. Trevor J. Dadson and Derek W. Flitter, eds. Birmingham, England: U of Birmingham P, 1998. xiv+ 172 pages. The eight articles collected here draw upon two views on intertextuality and analyze them in twentieth-century Spanish poetry. The standard view, linked to Harold Bloom, is that poets allude to their precursors and even wrestle with them in their texts. The extreme view, developed by Julia Kristeva, is that a writer is no more than a catalyst-or host-facilitating the temporary coalescence of alien intertexts. The former presupposes that subjective egos forge original oeuvres; the latter, that there is no verbal artifact or unique self for an original mind to confect. The articles apply these and more specific critical notions-hypertext, hypogram, anxiety of influence-which are reviewed in Arthur Terry's succinct prologue. Because of the high quality of the interpretations, the essays are a pleasure to read. Some of that pleasure stems from the variety of poets studied: from canonized elders (Jimenez, Alberti, Lorca), to important contemporaries (Andres Estelle's, Rossetti, De Cuenca), and including two unknowns (Mesanza, Cuevas). With respect to the canonized: Derek Gagen offers a fully contextualized study of Alberti's Platko. (Platko was Barcelona's Hungarian goalkeeper in their 1928 league championship win against Real Sociedad.) Uta Felten provides a quadripartite analysis of mythological, Platonic, Christian and mystical intertexts in Lorca's erotic poetry. Derek Flitter focuses on one of Juan Ramon Jimenez' last poems, El nombre conseguido, which he situates within Platonic philosophy and for which he suggests numerous, European intertexts. (To which I, an inveterate participant in the game of Intertext, could add one from Yeats.) With respect to contemporary poets, Dominic Keown focuses on the anxiety of influence manifested in L'engan conech by Vicent Andres Estelles (who was intent on killing off all his precursors). Chris Perriam-who comments on all of Ana Rossetti's poetry to date-- draws upon film theory and research on popular culture to argue that, with respect to her manipulation of the male body, she inverts, rather than subverts, conventional terms and values. Juan Jose Lanz studies the Classical texts Luis Alberto de Cuenca debunks, and the romances he recontextualizes within our postmodern reality. Lanz develops the extreme view of intertextuality, in which subjectivity has been displaced by an anonymous web of intertexts. …