Autobiographical Poetry in England and Spain, 1950-1980: Narrating Oneself in Verse

The volume traces the founding critical theories of the autobiographical genre, from the Enlightenment period to the most recent developments, which, since the Sixties and the essays of Roy Pascal and Jean Starobinski, have had a greater and greater influence. It offers in contrast to the essential, and by now classic, definition of Philippe Lejeune an increased effectiveness of the poem to express the narrative purposes of autobiography, recognizing poetic writing that has the extraordinary ability to say what the mortal language does not say, to quote Leopardi. The works of Seamus Heaney, Thom Gunn, Carlos Barral and Jaime Gil de Biedma are analyzed here, and show an unveiling of the self through memories, places and objects that often characterize them and that allow, to whomever recalls ones own experience through writing, the recovery and restoration of essential meanings to the reconstruction not only of subjective identity, but also of ones own community. See more