Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Mar 2019)
Some outstanding modulations of the topic of the falling leaves in the Spanish literature of the XXth and XXIst century
Abstract
After an introduction to establish the theoretical basis about literary topics, this study tries to analyze and to interpret some of the most outstanding modulations of the topic of falling leaves in 20th century Spanish poetry, with some incursions in the 21th century to prove the survival of the topic in our days. This topic has a double meaning, affective-existential on the one hand, and metaliterary on the other, both going deliberately united in some cases. Its semantic nucleus, based on a powerful graphic or visual dimension, often expresses the end of a love affair or of a life and the constant threat of oblivion. This literary topic is developed, above all, in poems of a narrative character that illustrate the sequence of the fall of the leaves and their subsequent dispersion blown in the wind.
