SOURCE: “The Role of Memory and the Senses in Bécquer's Poetic Theory,” in Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Vol. IV, No. 2, November, 1970, pp. 281-91.

In the following essay, Jones presents an overview of Bécquer's works, tracing his poetic theory through his writings.

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer did not enjoy fame in his own lifetime, but at his death in 1870 he left behind a small body of literature which has earned him a place in the foreground of nineteenth-century Spanish letters.¹ Today he stands between Romanticism and the more modern literary tendencies. The abundance of supernatural and mysterious elements, his fascination with ruins, the unlucky heroes who populate the Leyendas, and the quest for the absolute link him with the former movement, yet he deviates from the Romantic fondness for impulsive creation in his interest in the formal aspects of art.² Bécquer's works contain, in fact...