Pablo Neruda in Context

by Ignacio López-Calvo (Editor)

Overview

Pablo Neruda in Context includes forty-two essays by some of the main experts on Pablo Neruda's oeuvre that focus on how his places of residence and travel (Mexico, Argentina, Spain, France, Asia), the landmark event of the Cold War, as well as literary and political influences affected his poetic evolution. It also considers the other genres of his writing, including memoirs, letters, translation, and drama, as well as the musical and film adaptions of his work throughout the world. Other essays study his anti-colonial and ecocritical messages, his complicated relationships with women and other writers, as well as his take on race and the significance of his plausible assassination by Augusto Pinochet's military junta. The last section explores Neruda's poetry as world literature as well as his impressive reception in India, Japan, China, the Arab world, the Anglophone world, Russia and Eastern Europe, and his overall lasting legacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009635424
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/31/2025
Series:	Literature in Context
Pages:	417
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

About the Author

Ignacio López-Calvo is Presidential Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Literature at the University of California, Merced. He is the author of nine books, including The Mexican Transpacific: Nikkei Writing, Visual Arts, Performance (2022) and Saudades of Japan and Brazil: Contested Modernities in Lusophone Nikkei Cultural Production (2019).

Table of Contents

Foreword: A Bell and a Pencil with Green Ink. Reflections of a Young Poet; Introduction: The Author, His Life, and His Oeuvre; Part I. Residence and Travel: 1. A lo lejos alguien canta: Solitude as rite of passage and diplomatic life in East Asia, 1927-1932; 2. Pablo Neruda in Buenos Aires: An urban approach to his stay and sociability; 3. Pablo Neruda's España en el Corazón and the Spanish civil war; 4. France in the life and poetry of Pablo Neruda; 5. Of commitments and polemics: Neruda in Mexico, between Siqueiros and Paz; 6. Departure and return: Pablo Neruda, the traveler who always returned; Part II. Landmark Events and Relationships: 7. Neruda's misreadings: Myth and reality in Chilean history; 8. The Awards and honors of Pablo Neruda: The people's poet and politician; 9. Neruda on poetics: The 1971 nobel lecture; 10. Pablo Neruda: Poetry, monument, ruin; 11. The poet in New York: Pablo Neruda and the 1966 International P.E.N. club conference; 12. Women in the poet's life: More than muses; 13. Subjectivities and reception: Pablo Neruda on the 100th anniversary of Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada; Part III. Literary Influences and Poetic Evolution: 14. Neruda and his precursors: Negotiating one's debts; 15. The adolescent poetry of Pablo Neruda (1920–1924): From Crepusculario to Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada; 16. The confluence of avant-gardist form and realist content in residencia en la tierra; 17. Poetic evolution III (1950-1953): The politics and historicism of Pablo Neruda in canto general and España en el corazón; 18. Poetic evolution IV (1954-1957): The triptych of elemental odes, materialism, and everyday humble objects; 19. From late to posthumous poems: Neruda's forgotten futurity; Part IV. Other Genres: 20. Fulgor y muerte de Joaquín Murieta and the European political theater tradition; 21. Letters, life, and poetry: A pending task in the Nerudian universe; 22. The (In)visibility of the translator: Neruda and 44 poetas rumanos; 23. Amo las cosas loca, locamente': The poet as collector in Neruda's Odes; 24. We are many': How Neruda confessed to his contradictions in his memoirs; 25. Musical adaptations of Canto general; 26. Burning patience: Skármeta's invention of Neruda; Part V. Politics, Race, and Ecocriticism: 27. Pablo Neruda's political and intellectual trajectory: Between the author and the militant; 28. Pablo Neruda: on machu picchu and revolution; 29. The marxian Worldview in selected poems of Pablo Neruda; 30. Race and ethnicity: Pablo Neruda's black Atlantic; 31. Beyond the national poet: Neruda according to Chihuailaf; 32. Ecocritical readings: Neruda, critic of progress; Part VI. Worldwide Influence, Reception, and Legacy: 33. Poetry as World literature. The case of Pablo Neruda; 34. Fermenting the grapes of history: Decolonization and anti-imperialism in Neruda's India; 35. Neruda's legacy in China and Japan: from Ai Weiwei to Taeko Tomiyama; 36. Pablo Neruda from the Pacific to Palestine; 37. Pablo Neruda in dialogue with Nizâr Qabbânî and Mahmûd Darwîsh; 38. Neruda's life and poetry in the United States, United Kingdom, and the rest of the anglophone World; 39. Between Pushkin and Stalin: Pablo Neruda in the Soviet Union; Epilogue: 40. Of the time-worn human spring': On Pablo Neruda's legacy.