SOURCE: “Jorge Guillén and the Insufficiency of Poetic Language,” in PMLA, Vol. 106, No. 5, October, 1991, pp. 1146-55.

In the following essay, Mayhew discusses Guillén's views on the limitations of language as a means of poetic expression.

Jorge Guillén’s Lenguaje y poesía (Language and Poetry), one of the first critical works in Spanish to address the theoretical problems involved in defining poetic language, has provided a convenient point of departure for subsequent Spanish poets and critics. The most significant innovation in Guillén's lucid exposition of these problems is his linking of poetic language to the conception of language that underlies the writing of a poem: “Una obra literaria se define tanto por la actitud del escritor ante el mundo como por su manera de sentir y entender el lenguaje” ‘A literary work is defined both by the attitude of its author toward the world...