Thursday, February 14, 2013
Spanish poet...
"Spanish poet Rubén Darío..." (from p. 70 of Peter Nichols's Modernisms: A Literary Guide.) I can't get to exercised, because anyone can make a mistake. I once identified the Beloit Poetry Journal as the Beloit Poetry Review, or vice-versa. (I don't remember what the correct version is.) We are fallible as scholars. Still, I can use this to point out that Comp. Lit. type scholars of modernism don't necessary have the Hispanic world in their sights.
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4 comments:
This is actually a very frequent mistake. Ruben Dario was the only LatAm writer who was part of the Survey of Peninsular Literature course I took as an undergrad. He was also included as a Spanish poet on the MA reading list.
Of course, this is understandable. Dario is so good that everybody wants to claim him. :-)
I don't think someone teaching a survey at the college level or creating an MA list would really think that Darío is a Spanish poet. If so, that redefines "mere competence." I understand that you need to read him in order to understand what Machado, Unamuno, and Jiménez were reacting against. It might be a frequent slippage, as you say, but I haven't encountered it till now.
Is this as big a deal as USAian vs. British? Is Darío comparable in this sense to Pound or Eliot?
It is as big a deal. Darío is very canonical, too, so it would be like saying the American poet Thomas Hardy or the British poet Emily Dickinson. Darío did take some trips to Madrid, very well-publicized and influential, with a lot of contact with Spanish writers of the time.
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