Material contexts : the first editions of modern Spanish poetry, 1909-1931
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In this dissertation, I argue for a return to first editions. Much of today's criticism on turn-of-the-century Spanish poetry is based on modern editions, which strip poems from their original pages and from their original bindings. This dissertation, however, contends that both a poem's space on the page and its space within a book are critical for understanding the meaning of a poem. By overlooking the materiality of first editions, literary critics have lost some of the meaning and nuance that existed when fin-de-siècle poems were originally published. Drawing on theories of textual materiality and on contemporary book history, I provide close readings of three works: Antonio Machado's poems published in the Spanish journal La Lectura (1909-1910), Juan Ramón Jiménez's Diario de un poeta recién casado (1917), and Federico García Lorca's Poema del cante jondo (1931). Each chapter examines the ways in which the poems' physical contexts—from their typography to their paratextual elements to their paper quality—shaped meaning. Furthermore, each chapter studies how modern print editions have changed the meaning of the poems by altering the typography and by removing paratextual elements. To conclude, this dissertation addresses the transition from print books to digital books. As of the time of writing this dissertation, both Machado's poems from La Lectura and Jiménez's first edition of the Diario have been scanned and included in the Google Books archive. I contemplate how this change of materiality (or medium) affects meaning and whether this change is worthy of lamentation, as scholars like Nicholas Carr are wont to do.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Bajus, Mark Luther |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures. |
| Primary advisor | Surwillo, Lisa |
| Thesis advisor | Surwillo, Lisa |
| Thesis advisor | Barletta, Vincent |
| Thesis advisor | Predmore, Michael P |
| Advisor | Barletta, Vincent |
| Advisor | Predmore, Michael P |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Mark Luther Bajus. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Mark Luther Bajus
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...