The Aristocratic Poet: Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Reading of Walt Whitman
Abstract
The essay analyses Juan Ramón Jiménez’s reading of Walt Whitman as an aristocrat. For Jiménez, aristocracy is not a term associated with nobility. Instead, it is related to the intellectual effort that a poet – or any person – makes to improve himself, while at the same time maintaining ties with the folk. Jiménez wrote on Whitman in Alerta and El Modernismo. Apuntes de un curso and mentioned him in other essays and lectures. For Jiménez who used the American poet to foreground his own poetics, Whitman stood as one of the precursors of Spanish and Spanish American modernismo. Jiménez’s preference for the folk, led him to assert that he preferred Whitman’s brief poems to his big epic poetry which was then and continues to be the readers’ favourite.
Downloads
Article download
License
In order to support the global exchange of knowledge, the journal Complutense Journal of English Studies is allowing unrestricted access to its content as from its publication in this electronic edition, and as such it is an open-access journal. The originals published in this journal are the property of the Complutense University of Madrid and any reproduction thereof in full or in part must cite the source. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 use and distribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This circumstance must be expressly stated in these terms where necessary. You can view the summary and the complete legal text of the licence.