Though several generations of critics have reported finding English influences in the poetry of Luis Cernuda, no detailed or systematic study of the question has yet been undertaken. This book tackles the issue, concentrating on the traces in Cernuda’s work of three major English language poets: Robert Browning, W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Hughes takes us through a wide selection of the poetry Cernuda wrote in exile –which he holds to be the best and most significant work– in support of his argument that Cernuda’s conception of poetry underwent a radical reorganisation as a result of his absorption of certain of the techniques of his models. Browning’s influence, it is argued, is noticeable chiefly in prosodic features and in the use of the persona, Yeats’s is principally thematic, and Eliot’s is in some ways the most pervasive, since it affects Cernuda’s style and phrasing.
