ABSTRACT

This dissertation studies the poetics of Spanish American modernistas and avant-garde poets. I focus on the reflexive texts written by the poets, examining the development of aesthetic autonomy in modern literature as a context for the study of modern Spanish American literature. In chapter one, I consider the relationship between the public sphere and the emergence of critical discourses about art and poetry in Europe and the Americas. This process provides a historical perspective for the poetic discourses of the Romantic period’s most relevant poets. My study demonstrates how the emergence of different poetics of the Spanish American modernismo movement surface as a result of comparative tensions between the public sphere and the place of the isolated figure of the poet in Europe. In the second chapter I discuss the aesthetic conceptions of José Martí. I argue that his critique of modernity serves as a context for his aesthetic ideas. I also explore Martí’s idea of the poet as a hero, based on his metaphor of a warrior and the relation of this image to the poetics of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the third chapter I study the aesthetic notions of Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera an