Bodies in Motion Spanish Vanguard Poetry, Mass Culture, and Gender Dynamics

Bodies in Motion: Spanish Vanguard Poetry, Mass Culture, and Gender Dynamics examines Spanish avant-garde poetry within the context of the culture of the twenties that promoted physical movement and values of change, youthfulness, and freedom. Dance, sports, and the machine are singled out because they clearly set the body in motion and helped create a radically new outlook on life. In this book, references are made to sociopolitical factors and special attention is paid to gender. The interplay between poetry and its cultural environment attests to the influence social practices exert on the creative process and also to the capacity of poetic discourse to textualize reality, renew itself, and reinvent art. Spanish vanguard poets ranging from the most daring ultraistas to the professor/poets Pedro Salinas and Jorge Guill_n expressed the modernist obsession for change and the present through pronounced experimentation and a preoccupation with movement. The compelling new myth of movement implied action, mobility, and transformation. Certain Spanish poets embraced these new cultural codes, registering them in their poems, seeking new aesthetic and existential significance in them, and tapping them for discursive renewal. Dance, sports, and the new technology appear in their poetry in the form of themes, imagery, and poetic technique. In concert with its era, this poetry exudes enthusiasm, carefreeness, and vitality, and projects a delight over ludic pleasure and artistic creativity.

Catherine G. Bellver is Professor of Spanish at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She earned her BA at Northwestern University and her MA and PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. The poets of the Generation of '27 and Spanish women narrators of the post-civil war period have been the prime focus of her scholarly research. She has published three monographs: El mundo potico de Juan Jos Domenchina, Rafael Alberti en sus horas de destierro, and Absence and Presence: Spanish Women Poets of the Twenties and Thirties (BUP, 2000). She has also edited the complete works of poetry of Concha Mndez. She has published numerous articles, many book contributions, and scores of reviews in the United States, Mexico, and Spain. In recognition of her record in teaching, service, and research, she was granted the rank of Distinguished Professor of Spanish.