ABSTRACT |
E. E. Cummings was a true-blue New Englander who spent his life
surrounded by the multicultural sounds and sights of New York. He was at
ease when he mixed with the different peoples and races who populated
it, to later reflect everything in his works. Although Cummings is said
to reject everything west of the Appalachians, he really enjoyed
discovering new countries and their inhabitants so as to enrich himself
and transmit his knowledge to the audience. Cummings had his first
contact with Spanish culture at Harvard University and visited Spain in
1921. The writer was so fascinated with the country that memories of it
pervaded his mind forever. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to
demonstrate how Cummings used his appreciation of the Spaniards to
confirm how the experience and mentality of an ancient European country
can mix with the naivety and modernity of the New World in order to
create rich works of art and second, to prove that he really initiated
his process of self-construction leaving America temporarily behind and
using the European civilization as one more strategy to find himself.
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