Entre pureza y revolucion: Essays in Honor of Juan Cano Ballesta
edited by Candelas Gala and Anne E. Hardcastle

This volume honors Dr. Juan Cano Ballesta for his many contributions to the field of Spanish Studies. With at least six scholarly books, nine edited volumes, and numerous essays published to date, Cano Ballesta offers an extensive, insightful examination of more than a century’s poetic development in Spain. His seminal book, La poesía española entre pureza y revolución (editions in 1972, 1996) has served as an essential guide for understanding of poetic developments in the 20th century.

The present volume is organized around the productive tension that Cano Ballesta established in his own research between the artistic concepts of pureza and revolución. The ebb and flow throughout the century, between pure and socially committed poetry, have been chronicled in much of Cano Ballesta’s work. His work reflects on the concatenation of epistemological fields and encourages the cross-pollination of many different social and aesthetic contexts.

The eight scholars included in this volume have taken Cano Ballesta’s pureza and revolución notions and adapted them to best illuminate facets of their own studies. From Gerardo Diego’s theoretical examination of poetic creacionismo to the vibrant aesthetic and political beats of Argentine tango, to fiction that struggles with (re)defining the multicultural identity of post-Franco Spain, these essays range across the spectrum from more emphasis on pureza to more on revolución. They attest to the versatility and flexibility of these notions as a framework for studying the interaction of aesthetic rigor and ideological engagement in art.

As admirers, students, and colleagues of Dr. Juan Cano Ballesta, we offer this volume in honor of the profound influence he has had on literary criticism and on each of us in his fruitful, remarkable life as a scholar and our friend.

ISBN 978-1-58871-160-1 (HB) Homenajes #34