Bulletin of Spanish Studies

Cartographies of Spanish Modernism: (Re) Contextualising the Generation of 1927

One of the ironies with the Spanish obsession of classifying literary and artistic histories around particular ‘generations’ is that the Generation of 1927, widely considered to be made up of innovative and avant-garde writers and artists, was constructed around the 300th anniversary of the death of Spain’s foremost Baroque poet, Luis de Góngora. Looking back to past greatness to make sense of a present reality was deeply embedded in the Zeitgeist of early 20th century Spain, and the Generation of 1927 was a natural follow-on from the Generation of 1898, which coalesced around a sentiment of lament around the final death-blow to Spain’s ‘glorious’ imperial past.

The names that immediately come to mind when 1927 is mentioned are mainly those of male authors (Federico García Lorca, Luis Cernuda, Pedro Salinas, Emilio Prados, Manuel Altolaguirre, Gerardo Diego, Rafael Alberti, Vicente Alexandre, Dámaso Alonso, amongst others), although María Zambrano, María Teresa León, Ernestina de Champourcín, Rosa Chacel, Josefina de la Torre, Maruja Mallo and Remedios Varo have elicited considerable critical attention. But what about all those writers who were excluded from the canon, despite imbibing from the same cultural milieu? Or those on the fringes?

This special issue will use a wide variety of theoretical tools to examine the poetics of the Generation of 1927, the work of its canonical and non-canonical authors, and their literary and artistic afterlives.

Whilst we are particularly interested in engaging critically with issues of canonicity (decisions around inclusion and exclusion that shape literary historiographies), we welcome submissions that deal with a broad range of topics and approaches, and outline a few below:

-Canon formation (inclusion/exclusion)

-Literary historiographies

-Writing under dictatorship

-Urban space and representation

-Literary afterlives

-The role of the revistas literarias

-Literary geographies

-Visual cultures

-Tradition/avant-garde

-Philosophical discourse and the Generation of 1927

-Excluded voices from the canon

-Confluences and ripples of 1927 in Latin American literature and art

-Ideology and the avant-garde

-Trans-Atlantic connections

-Regional & national identities and modernism

-Poetics of place & the spatial imagination