This thesis attempts to show how the little magazine Carmen (1927-28), and its militant supplement, Lola, together provide evidence of the innovative work of a newly emergent generation of poets in the 1920s. An historical overview of literary events in the decade is given in the first chapter in order to situate the more specific comparisons made in the second chapter with other Spanish periodical reviews which were both precursors and contemporary publications. Chapter three and four are dedicated to an in-depth analysis of the contents of Carmen and Lola. By focusing exclusively upon these somewhat neglected reviews, the intention here is to prove that, as their founding editor, Gerardo Diego, proposed, they are both an important source of documentary history concerning the Generation of 1927 and a fascinating anthology of its poetry.

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Luis Cernuda (1902-1963) was exiled from Spain in 1938 due to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. He lived in Great Britain, America and Mexico and he never returned to his homeland. Until the mid-1960s, he was considered by the Spanish literary establishment to be an evasive and astringent poet. Since then, critics have recognised and praised the ethical quality and nature of his work and he is now considered to be one of the most profound and influential Spanish poets of the twentieth century. Despite the growing body of critical work on Cernuda, the salient role played by memory in his poetry has received little sustained critical attention. Critics have tended to stress the nostalgic and the evasive rather than the ethical and contemplative role played by memory in his work both before and after his departure from Spain. The objective of this thesis is to provide a more balanced view of the poet’s use of memory in his early and mature poetry. Rather than limiting his concept of memory to nostalgia for his youth or his homeland, it argues that he deploys memory as an instrument of self-analysis, self-discovery and self-criticism. The first chapter concentrates on his pre-exilic poetry in order to show that memory plays a fundamental role in his poetics prior to the experience of physical exile. The central body of the thesis examines the increasingly analytical and philosophical role played by memory in a selection of his mature prose and verse texts written outwith Spain.

Based on a comparative method of enquiry, this thesis analyses the process of self-definition expressed in the work of Gloria Fuertes (Madrid, 1917-1998) and Pilar Paz Pasamar (Jerez de la Frontera, 1933) as individual alternatives to the collective ethos and literary practices promoted within the patriarchal society of Franco’s Spain. Recognizing the poets’ cultural and socio-political context as determining factors in their experiences as women and poets, and therefore in their outlook and poetics, this context and how it is reflected in their poetry provides the starting point (Chapter 1). Both poets acknowledge that writing poetry can provide them with a metaphorical space of freedom that enables them to develop their identity and explore their preoccupations. Therefore, their thoughts about poetry provide an important theme that occurs in the poetry of both (Chapter 2). Closely related to this is the link they establish between poetic inspiration and the divine, which in the case of Pilar Paz Pasamar leads to the attempt to use the special qualities of poetic language to refer to a universal truth that she is aware of and which transcends the capabilities of language, while Gloria Fuertes regards poetry as a divine gift that can provide solace and is ultimately able to improve the world (Chapter 3). The fourth chapter focuses on specific elements of the two poets’ work that reveal the distinctive mechanisms of self-construction they develop. The section on Fuertes considers humour as a survival strategy that enables the poet to reach out to her readership and emphasize her focus on the here and now, while the discussion on Paz’s work looks at how the use of sea imagery allows her to convey abstract experiences based on introspection. Thus, it is argued that their poetry reflects the different strategies the two women develop – based on integration in the case of Fuertes and a more separate position in the case of Paz – to define themselves in relation to their world.

This thesis aims to rescue the name of Elisabeth Mulder, a Spanish female poet who started to publish her first poetry books around the rise of the Generation of 1927 in Spain. The importance of this work hinges on the recognition of Mulder as a female poet whose work has been marginalized from the literary canon, like that of many other women of her era. This thesis focuses on Mulde''s third poetry collection, Sinfonâia en rojo, which was published in 1929 and stands out for its symbolic richness and its romantic and modernist features. Part of this research deals with the symbolism of the color red and the meanings that red acquires within the context of the poems. The main leitmotivs of Sinfonâia en rojo are the images of fire and blood, which are used to make reference to both the emotional and the physical world of the poetic voice. The research also focuses on the connections between Mulder's work and that of her contemporaries, and it suggests that she was in contact with the literary world of her era. / by Itxaso del Olmo Lâopez. / Abstract in English. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.