The Poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez: An Example of Modern Subjectivity

The poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez, Nobel Laureate in 1956, can be regarded as a condensation of the modern poetic tradition, displaying romantic subjectivity, symbolist textuality, and avant-garde self-parody—in turn different facets of the modern paradigm. In The Poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez, Julio Jensen investigates the lyrical subject appearing in Jiménez’s poetry as exemplary of the modern notion of subjectivity. Through the correlations between literature and philosophy, the analyses of Jiménez’s poetry show the modern subject’s characteristic oscillation between self-enthronement and self-defenestration. With insightful readings, the author opens a rich vein in the work of a writer who would come to inform an entire era of Spanish-language poetry.