The anxiety of influence: a review of Luis Cernuda's poetry through the myth of Narcissus

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the presence of the story of Narcissus in the work of Luis Cernuda, allowing us to appreciate how the Sevillian author develops and treats the myth, all of this from a diachronic dimension and from the perspective of the revised concept of tradition, but starting from the theories of H. Bloom concerning the notion of ‘anxiety of influence’, together with. The ideas of T. S. Eliot contained in the essays «The Tradition and the Individual Talent» and «What Is a Classic?», as well as those of E. Said, in a complementary way, in relation to the concept of ‘admiration for predecessors’.

Keywords

• generation of '27
• luis cernuda
• classical mythology
• tradition
• influence