Rewriting themselves: some occurrences of textual repetition in Cervantes, Goethe and Lorca

Authors

  • Claudio Castro Filho Universidade de Coimbra

Abstract

This paper focuses on the displacements and textual repetitions expresed in Cervantes, Goethe and García Lorca, analyzing them as an aesthetic procedure that highlights the author’s identity. Based on Gumbrecht’s considerations on the various stages of Modernity, the textual repetition is related to the different strategies, carried out by the three authors in question, of affirming or problematizing the literary subject from Early Modernity to the avant-gardes. In this context, Cervantes inaugurates the modern novel when he questions the verity of the text. Goethe, on the other hand, establishes, through repetition, a relationship of complicity with the reader, mediated by a poetics of memory. Lorca, finally, uses to repetition to blur the boundaries between lyric and dramatic character, adding new layers of complexity to the problem of the subject in literature.

Keywords:

textual repetition, modernity, Cervantes, Goethe, Lorca