Entreguerras and the Tradition of the Autobiographical Long Poem

Abstract

This paper aims to give an account of the tradition in which the poem Entreguerras, by José Manuel Caballero Bonald (2012) is inserted. To do so, it first explores the relationship between poetry and autobiography in order to demonstrate the referential capacity of lyric poetry. It then goes on to show how this oblique way of referring, which constructs reality by naming it, can be transferred to the long poem, giving rise to a line of autobiographies in verse that share certain features and whose main common characteristic is that they constitute in themselves a process of revelation or self-knowledge rather than the testimony of a lived reality.