Modern Latin American Poetry

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Is there a margin? Is there a center? Or, is everything cannibalized and left in the space in-between different cultural manifestations? This course explores the development of modern lyric poetry in Latin America between 1880s-1960s, approximately. The aim of this course is to develop a critical framework for understanding (1) the development of modern poetics, (2) the particular ways these different territories respond to the idea of modernity in poetry, particularly the emergence of avant-garde, and (3) its impact on the neo-avant-garde in the 1960s. Some of the questions to be addressed in this course are: the relationship between poetry and avant-garde art, the place of language, cultural dependency, the importance of form, the relationship between autonomous and the social committed art, among others. Readings in Portuguese, Spanish and English. Authors include: Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Gabriela Mistral, Fernando Pessoa, Sá Carneiro, Almada Negreiros, Mário de Andrade, Cecília Meireles, Manuel Bandeira, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Vicente Aleixandre, Jorge Guillén, among others. All work and discussion in Spanish.