SOURCE: "Aspects of Perspective in Rosalía de Castro's En las orillas del Sar," in Kentucky Romance Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3, 1982, pp. 273-82.

In the following essay, Miller studies Castro's complex stylistic and thematic use of perspective in the poems of En las orillas del Sar.

The poetry of Rosalía de Castro has frequently been characterized as simple, clear, and unadorned.¹ Like Bécquer's, her verse possesses a certain simplicity to which it owes part of its charm. Yet many of her poems, though outwardly uncomplicated in theme and technique, have a strangely complicated effect on their reader, and often this effect is due to her subtle manipulation of perspectives.

Rosalía's use of perspective play is related to what critic Kathleen Kulp terms the "dramatic mode" in her works and defines as the use of dialogue and dramatic presentation. For Kulp, who rightly points out the importance...