The Poet as Hero: Pedro Salinas and his Theater, by Susan G. Polansky.
Polansky's study focuses on the poet‐protagonists who animate communication between characters in the plays of Salinas. She investigates how Salinas, a poet living in exile, turned to theater to express nostalgia for his personal past, to find a connection to literary tradition, and to show his concern for the difficulties of modern life.
Table of Contents:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
Part I: The Genesis and Aims of Salinas’s Theater
1 Salinas: Poet and Correspondent
Salinas’s Letters to Margarita
Salinas’s Letters to Jorge Guillén
Salinas’s Letters to Katherine Reding Whitmore
2 Salinas: Poet and Essayist
Poets and their Vision of Reality in Salinas’s Studies of Poets and Poetry
Salinas’s Studies of Jorge Manrique and Rubén Darío
Salinas’s Essays on Jorge Carrera Andrade and Federico García Lorca
Modernity, Communication, and Theater: El defensor and La responsabilidad del escritor
Spanish Playwrights and the Construction of Reality
3 Salinas: Poet and Émigré
Exile as a Spanish Circumstance and a Defining Feature of Salinas’s Generation
Salinas’s Literary Studies and the Theme of Exile
Salinas’s Separation from Spain
Part II: The Poet in the Theater
4 Poet and Plot: The “Fabula” of Confinement‐to‐Freedom
“Reality in Fable Form”: The Fabula of Confinement‐to‐ Freedom
Freedom and Felicitous Outcome
Freedom and Tragic Outcome
The Poet in the Plot
5 Poet and Plot: Two Variations
A Nostalgic Transplanting: El chantajista
An Anguished Prophecy: Caín o una gloria científica
6 Poet and Perception: The Poet as a Visionary
Salinas’s Views of the Poet’s Capacity to See
Viewer‐Guiders and Guided Viewers
Eyes, Windows, Mirrors, and the Scope of the Poet
Sightedness and Blindness
7 Poet and Circumstance: The Poet’s Bridge between Tradition and Modernity
Tradition, Modernity, and Cervantine Values
The Poet’s Bridge Completed: La Estratoesfera
The Poet’s Bridge Interrupted: Judit y el tirano
The Poet’s Bridge of Hope: Los santos
CONCLUSION The Poet’s Place
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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ISBN 978-1-58871-081-9 (PB, 294 pp.) $45