La España de posguerra y la poesía Anglófona

The main aim of this essay is to analyse the translations and reviews of English poetry that appeared in three representative literary journals of post-Civil War Spain: Escorial (1940-1947), Espadaña (1944-1950) and Cántico (1947-1949;1954-1957). The proportion of articles and translations, characteristics and scholarly seriousness of the sections devoted to this topic will give evidence of the ideological background of each of the three publications. We will study the reasons that led to the various choices of both poets and translators and this will also be an aid to our inquiry into the political and aesthetic assumptions of these journals.

During the 1940’ś and 50’ś, literary reviews were the place where many Spanish intellectuals and scholars could more or less openly express their different reactions towards Franco ś dictatorship. And — as professor Rubio (1976) has pointed out — as far as ideological involvement was concerned, there were two main types of journals: the “eclectic” and the “confessional”. Within the “confessional” type, Escorial would voice the official dogma whereas Espadaña would stand for the impatient detractors of the règime, the so called “tremendistas”. As for Cántico, this journal was an example of the “eclectic” position, since it welcomed all kinds of aesthetic and political creeds.

The three reviews will be examined altogether as a paradigm of the literary situation in Spain, during the years of ideological censorship and intellectual involution that followed the Civil War.