Whatever Happened to Francisco Villaespesa? Further Considerations

• Published in: Bulletin of Spanish studies (2002) Vol. 95; no. 9-10; pp. 255 - 266
• Main Author: Cardwell, Richard A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 26-11-2018
• Subjects: 1900 revolutionary collections; Antonio Machado; Decadence; Francisco Villaespesa; guerra literaria; Helios magazine; Juan Ramón Jiménez; Latin America; Manuel Machado; Modernismo; Parnassianism; Rubén Darío; second guerra literaria; Spanish and Spanish-American fin-de-siècle poetry; Symbolism
• ISSN: 1475-3820; 1478-3428
• DOI: 10.1080/14753820.2018.1539561

Villaespesa was a major player in the first guerra literaria (c.1898-1902). From 1902 he found a new style but never associated with the writers centred on the magazine Helios in a second guerra literaria. Further collections he published also failed to capture the new Symbolist style of Jiménez and Machado. From 1912, engaged in his Moorish dramas and absent on lengthy visits to Latin America, he disappeared from the Madrid literary scene. Villaespesa has failed to engage the critical attention given by scholars to his contemporaries. This essay seeks to explain why such a prolific and, initially, successful poet, despite attempted re-assessments by critics, remains at the margins of modernista history.