“La alegre libertad en la catástrofe”: Tensions between language and truth in Spanish young poets (2011-2018)

Abstract

In the last years, many books of poems on an avant-garde line have been published, characterised by language experimentation and written by young authors. However, the attention of the critics, especially from a comparative perspective, has been just occasional. Therefore, the current paper aims to study the aesthetic affinities around the relationship between “language” and “truth” that is shown in these books of poems.  Ultimately, the paper’s approach updates the influential discussion about poetry as knowledge or as communication, which set the literary scene of the last century, and adapts it to a new metatextual register. To achieve this goal, texts by Cristian Piné, Ángela Segovia, Unai Velasco, Berta García Faet, Arantxa Romero, Gema Palacios, Álvaro Guijarro, Bibiana Collado, Lucía Boscá or Lola Nieto have been selected and analysed. They are all younger than 35 years old, new novísimos for the 21st century, linked by their linguistic consciousness and reformation willingness, since they do not adhere to any group nor label.