Some elements of structure in the poetry of Blas de Otero /

Abstract

Chapter eleven examines the poet's use of sound patterns to create meaning in poems and in word plays, and his use of the enjambement to quicken or slow down the pace of a poem, to accommodate its natural rhythm or for emphasis on key words.

Chapter twelve, the conclusion, is a summation of the aspects of Otero's poetry discussed in the study and a comment on his established position among the poets of postwar Spain.

Chapters four through ten treat some elements of the formal structure of Otero's poems, which aim at reaching the masses: the use of epigraphs, the change in verse from the lira and the sonnet to free verse and hybrid forms, circular poems, poems structured as dialogues and conversations, poems without punctuation, those with intercalated quotations and frases hechas, and others that make use of parallelisms and correlations.

Blas de Otero figures among the more eminent poets of the post Civil War period in Spain. He began as a personal, religious poet who evolved to social poetry and later reverted to personal, meditative poetry. This study examines the lexical, pronominal, formal, phonic and rhythmic features that accompany the thematic evolution in Otero's poetry.

Chapter one, the introduction, gives biographical facts about the poet and situates him in his historical, literary and political era. It includes a statement about the existing literary criticism of Otero's work and names the works and articles of Formalist, Structuralist, and traditional criticism that form the basis of this eclectic study. Chapters two and three are a structural description of the lexicon and the pronouns that support the themes of his collections: the search for God expressed in Cantico espiritual, Redoble de conciencia and Ancia, the social struggle for peace, freedom and progress in Pido la paz y la palabra, En castellano and Que trata de Espana, the transitional period in Mientras, and the poet's meditation on his life, his travels, and his approaching death in the final poems of Expresion y reunion.