Love’s Sanctuaries: Erotic Spatiality and the Agora in Ernesto Cardenal’s Epigramas.

Authors

  • Barbara Fraser-Valencia None

Keywords:

Latin American Literature, Poetry, Twentieth Century, Nicaragua, Ernesto Cardenal, Anastasio Somoza Garcia, Religion, Eroticism

Abstract

This article examines the social dimensions of Ernesto Cardenal's early lyric poetry.  Both the secular erotic text Epigramas, and the religious monastic work Gethsemani KY imagine a dualism between the enclosure created by sincere expressions of erotic love and the agora created by the corrupt materialism of the Somoza regime and modernity as a whole.  I argue that Cardenal's mapping of a dualism between pure enclosure and corrupt agora derives from the conception of the artist in literary modernismo and represents an ingenious alternative form of social criticism that brings together intimate, collective and moral realities.

Author Biography

  • Barbara Fraser-Valencia, None
    Barbara Fraser-Valencia is a recent PhD graduate from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.  Her specialty is 20th Century Latin American Poetry.

Published

2015-01-15

Issue

Section

Articles / Artículos

How to Cite

Love’s Sanctuaries: Erotic Spatiality and the Agora in Ernesto Cardenal’s Epigramas. (2015). A Contracorriente: Una Revista De Estudios Latinoamericanos, 12(2), 377-400. https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/1283