Guillermo Díaz-Plaja
(Manresa, 1909-Barcelona, 1984) Critic, essayist, poet and professor of Spanish Language and Literature, brother of Fernando Díaz-Plaja.Author of educational works related to his specialty, he devoted himself mainly to literary erudition issues in articles and essays.
He was an honorary professor at the University of San Marcos de Lima (1963) and, between 1966 and 1970, director of the National Institute of the Spanish Book.He obtained the National Prize for Literature for his Introduction to the study of Spanish Romanticism (1936; 2nd edition, 1942), and in 1962 the City of Barcelona Prize for Essay with Viatge a l'Atlàndida i return to Ithaca ( Journey to Atlantis and return to Ithaca ) .
Literary research constitutes the most notable of his contribution to the letters.In his beginnings he opted for the great syntheses and panoramic views of literature, guarding the apparatus of erudition, so intense, however, in his work.In A question of limits (1963) and Soliloquy and colloquium (1968), he dealt with "border aesthetics", the confusing generic limit of some works.
Modernismo versus Noventa y Ocho (1951) is a firm defense, against the general opinion, of one's own identity and the differences between the movement started by Rubén Darío and the group of writers associated with the Generation of '98 (Azorín, Pío Baroja, Miguel de Unamuno). The aesthetics of Valle-Inclán (1967), dedicated to the great playwright Ramón del Valle-Inclán, is another of the outstanding titles in the author's extensive bibliography.
Perhaps his most revealing book is Structure and meaning of Spanish Novecentismo (1975), a study of the period between the Generation of '98 and '27; in it, he highlights the Spanish cultural complexity, highlighting the importance that the periphery, especially the Barcelona cultural focus, had in the gestation and development of this movement.
Of his abundant essay work, both in Spanish and Catalan, it is worth highlighting Epistolario de Goya (1928); L'avantguardisme a Catalunya ( The avant-garde in Catalonia , 1930); Rubén Darío (1930); Spanish lyric poetry (1937); The paper window (1939); The spirit of the Baroque (1940); Towards a concept of Spanish literature (1942); The deception of the eyes (1943); Outline of the history of the theater (1944); Federico García Lorca (1948); Defense of criticism and other notes (1953); Twenty glosses in memory of Eugenio d'Ors (1955); the anthologies The Prose Poem in Spain (1956) and Contemporary Visions of Spain (1956); The study of literature (1963); Memory of a destroyed generation (1966); Universal Literature (1966); The monsters and other literatures (1967); The letter and the moment (1967); With varied course (1967); Africa at the waist (1967); Tropics (1968); Basque Literature (1972) and Treatise on Spanish melancholy (1974).
He directed a History of Hispanic Literatures (1949-1958) and a Greater Anthology of Hispanic American Literature (1967).In the poetic field, Poetry in thirty years (1941-1971) and Poems and songs from Brazil (1974) stand out.He was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy since 1967.Finally, in 1978 he published a memoir entitled Portrait of a director .
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