James VALENDER

2019-2020

University College London

Modern Poetry, Spain, Exile, Mexico

Manuel Altolaguirre and Modern Latin American Poetry (1935-1936)

James Valender was awarded his Ph.D. at University College London, with a thesis on “The lyrical and narrative prose of Luis Cernuda” (1980). He has been living in Mexico City since 1977. From 1980 to 1989 he was professor of Modern Spanish Literature at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Iztapalapa and since 1989 he holds a similar post at El Colegio de México. His research interests center around the poetry of the Generation of 27 (Luis Cernuda, Federico García Lorca, Manuel Altolaguirre, Emilio Prados, Concha Méndez…) and the literature written by the Republican intellectuals in exile. His major publication to date has been his contribution to the three-volume edition of the correspondence of the founder of the Residencia de Estudiantes, Alberto Jiménez Fraud (1883-1964). After publishing an edition of the complete works and the correspondence of Manuel Altolaguirre (1905-1959), he is shortly to start out on a full-length biography of the same figure.

During his stay in Madrid James Valender intends to do research into one of the more important moments in the intense literary dialogue that took place in the 1930’s between the Spanish poets and their Latin American counterparts: one which coincided with the launching of Caballo verde para la poesía (1935-1936), the literary magazine directed by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, but edited and printed in their private printing press by the Spaniards Manuel Altolaguirre and Concha Méndez. The research will consist, firt of all, in analysing the contributions of the Latin American poets (Pablo Neruda, Luis Enrique Délano, Ángel Cruchaga Santa María, Félix Pita Rodríguez, Ricardo Molinari, Raúl González Tuñón y José González Carbalho) and in comparing their propositions with the poems published by the Spaniards (this means Rafael Alberti, Vicente Aleixandre, Jorge Guillén and Federico García Lorca, but also younger figures such as Arturo Serrano Plaja, Leopoldo Panero and Miguel Hernández). In a second stage he will attempt to reconstruct the last number of the magazine —a double issue in homage to the Uruguayan poet Julio Herrera y Reissig— which, according to testimonies from the period, was actually printed but was susequently lost when the Civil War broke out in July 1936.

Genaro Estrada y los intelectuales del exilio español. Nuevos datos sobre los orígenes de La Casa de España en México. Ciudad de México, El Colegio de México, 2018.

Coeditor de Alberto Jiménez Fraud, Epistolario 1936-1964. 3 vols. Madrid, Unicaja / Publicaciones de la Residencia de Estudiantes, 2018.

“La poesía española de posguerra. Relaciones entre los poetas exiliados y los peninsulares”, en José Ramón López García (ed.), La poesía del exilio republicano de 1939. 1. Historiografías, resistencias, figuraciones. Sevilla, Renacimiento, 2018, pp. 79-113.

“Disciplina y oasis. La revista Índice (1921-1922) y la nueva poesía española”, en Rose Corral, Anthony Stanton y James Valender (eds.), Laboratorios de lo nuevo: revistas literarias y culturales de México, España y el Río de la Plata en la década de 1920, Ciudad de México, El Colegio de México, 2018, pp.149-172.

Manuel Altolaguirre. Álbum. Madrid. Publicaciones de la Residencia de Estudiantes, 2012.




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