Octavio Paz A Study Of His Poetics

Jason Wilson's 'spiritual biography' of a poet-thinker approaches Paz's poetics through his fertile relationship with André Breton, the surrealist leader.

In this comprehensive examination of the work of Octavio Paz - winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature and Mexico's important literary and cultural figure - Jose Quiroga presents an analysis of Paz's writings in light of works by and about him. Combining broad erudition with scholarly attention to detail, Quiroga views Paz's work as an open narrative that explores the relationships between the poet, his readers and his time.

"In this book, scholar Thorpe Running shows that a skeptical approach to both language and poetry places eight poets from three countries in Latin America within a strain of poetry prefigured by Stephane Mallarme." "Octavio Paz, Jorge Luis Borges, Roberto Juarroz, Alejandra Pizarnik, Alberto Girri, Juan Luis Martinez, Gonzalo Millan, and David Huerta span three different generations. In addition to their age and geographical differences, their poetry bears no obvious similarities. All eight, however, are poetas pensantes, or thinking poets, and underlying the work of these probing writers is the disturbing question: Does language do what it is supposed to do? The answer is negative for all these poets who see their poems as being made up of words that don't work."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Octavio Paz launches a far-ranging excursion into the "incestuous and tempestuous" relations between modern poetry and the modern epoch. From the perspective of a Spanish-American and a poet, he explores the opposite meanings that the word "modern" has held for poets and philosophers, artists, and scientists. Tracing the beginnings of the modern poetry movement to the pre-Romantics, Paz outlines its course as a contradictory dialogue between the poetry of the Romance and Germanic languages. He discusses at length the unique character of Anglo-American "modernism" within the avant-garde movement, and especially vis- -vis French and Spanish-American poetry. Finally he offers a critique of our era's attitude toward the concept of time, affirming that we are at the "twilight of the idea of the future." He proposes that we are living at the end of the avant-garde, the end of that vision of the world and of art born with the first Romantics.

This wide-ranging comparative study argues for a fundamental reassessment of the literary history of the nineteenth-century United States within the transamerican and multilingual contexts that shaped it. Drawing on an array of texts in English, French and Spanish by both canonical and neglected writers and activists, Anna Brickhouse investigates interactions between US, Latin American and Caribbean literatures. Her many examples and case studies include the Mexican genealogies of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the rewriting of Uncle Tom's Cabin by a Haitian dramatist, and a French Caribbean translation of the poetry of Phillis Wheatley. Brickhouse uncovers lines of literary influence and descent linking Philadelphia and Havana, Port-au-Prince and Boston, Paris and New Orleans. She argues for a new understanding of this most formative period of literary production in the United States as a 'transamerican renaissance', a rich era of literary border-crossing and transcontinental cultural exchange.

In the last couple of decades there has been a surge of interest in Octavio Paz's life and work, and a number of important books have been published on Paz. However, most of these books are of a biographical nature, or they examine Paz's role in the various intellectual initiatives he headed in Mexico, specifically the journals he founded. Reality in Movement looks at a wide range of topics of interest in Paz's career, including his engagement with the subversive, adversary strain in Western culture; his meditations on questions of cultural identity and intercultural contact; his dialogue with both leftist and conservative ideological traditions; his interest in feminism and psychoanalysis, and his theory of poetry. It concludes with a chapter on Octavio Paz as a literary character—a kind of reception study. Offering a complex and nuanced portrait of Paz as a writer and thinker—as well as an understanding of the era in which he lived—Reality in Movement will appeal to students of Octavio Paz and of Mexican literature more generally, and to readers with an interest in the many significant literary, cultural, political, and historical topics Paz wrote about over the course of his long career.

Equally important to our understanding of history and humanity are the great works of literature. The Nobel Prize for literature recognises modern classics and the efforts of authors to bridge gaps between different cultures, time-periods and styles; the prizewinners between 1968 and 1995 are from four continents. These volumes are collections of the Nobel lectures delivered by the prizewinners, together with their biographies, portraits and presentation speeches for the period 1968 - 1995. Each Nobel lecture is based on the work that won the laureate his prize. New biographical data of the laureates, since they were awarded the Nobel prize, are also included. These volumes of inspiring lectures by outstanding individuals should be on everyone's bookshelf. Literature: (1981) E Canetti -- for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power; (1982) G G Marquez -- for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composedworld of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts; (1983) W Golding -- for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today; (1984) J Seifert -- for his poetry which endowed with freshness, sensuality and rich inventiveness provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man; (1985) C Simon -- who in his novel combines the poet's and the painter's creativeness with a deepened awareness of time in the depiction of the human condition; (1986) W Soyinka -- who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama ofexistence; (1987) J Brodsky -- for an all-embracing authorship imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity; (1988) N Mahfouz -- who, through works rich in nuance -- now clearsightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous --

Charting surrealism in Latin American literature from its initial appearance in Argentina in 1928 to the surrealist-inspired work of several writers in the 1970s, Melanie Nicholson argues that surrealism has exercised a significant and positive influence over twentieth-century Latin American literature, particularly poetry.