Maria Victoria Atencia: Legend of Myself (Aris & Phillips Hispanic Classics) - Softcover

Atencia, Maria Victoria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908343915 ISBN 13: 9781908343918

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 2014

Synopsis

In this collection of 65 short poems, Roberta Quance exemplifies the range, vitality and mysticism of work by one of Spain's foremost, if controversial, contemporary female poets, drawing on the contents of a number of Spanish collections. In Atencia's poetry the poetic subject is often seen as someone who occupies an interior space, either crossing over the threshold from the outside world to an inner one (a garden, a house, a castle), or moving from the inner, home space to one even more interior: the world of dreams and imagination and hope, which can project outward into liminal spaces of the sky or the sea. A very basic paradox of Christian mystical experience- of abasement and magnification - haunts Atencia's work. She has made her own one of its fundamental tenets: the purging of self, the shedding of all trace of worldly attachment in order to ‘make room' for experience of a different reality: the self's sense of ‘nothingness' in the face of beauty is a prized moment in and of itself; it is sublime. Atencia's definitive manner: classically shaped verse in the tradition of the‘pure poetry' of the Generation of 1927, which makes myth of a womanly self, is amply explored in this first major English edition of her work to appear since 1987. Maria Victoria Atencia was born in Malaga (Andalusia) in 1931 and has lived there or in the country thereabouts all of her life Although trained originally as a pianist she chose a vocation for poetry, instead, publishing her first work in 1953 and continuing to publish to the present day. In 2010 she was given the Federico Garcia Lorca prize for poetry, in recognition of a lifetime of achievement. Roberta Quance is Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese Studies at Queen's University Belfast. She is author of books on mythology and modernity in modern literature and desire in the poetry of Lorca as well as articles on women writers and artists associated with the Generation of 1927 and translations of work by Carlos Piera.

About this title

About the Authors

Marķa Victoria Atencia was born in Mįlaga (Andalusia) in 1931 and has lived there or in the country thereabouts all of her life Although trained originally as a pianist she chose a vocation for poetry, instead, publishing her first work in 1953 and continuing to publish to the present day. In 2010 she was given the Federico Garcķa Lorca prize for poetry, in recognition of a lifetime of achievement.

Born in Canandaigua, New York, Roberta Quance was awarded a PhD in Spanish in 1982 from Cornell University. She has written for both scholarly and general audiences in Europe and the United States. She has lectured at the University of Utrecht, the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Queen’s University Belfast and currently resides in Madrid.

Edition details

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1908343915
• ISBN 13: 9781908343918
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192