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The philosopher María Zambrano (1904-1991) is one of the foremost Spanish intellectuals of the twentieth century. A disciple of Ortega y Gasset, she taught at the University of Madrid in the 1930s and joined the Republican diaspora in exile, living in México, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Paris, Rome and Geneva till her return to Spain in 1984. A heterodox philosopher who conceived her role as that of an agent for ethical change, she sought to reconcile philosophy and poetry, and wrote not only essays on philosophy, but also plays, poetry, literary and art reviews, and a memoir. After the relative obscurity of her life in exile, her genius began to be recognized in the decade before her death, but she remains little known outside the Spanish-speaking world. These essays explore her legacy, offering new critical insights which draw on literature, aesthetics, gender studies, psychoanalysis, political theory and the visual arts.

The editors teach modern Spanish literature at the University of Oxford, where Xon de Ros is a Tutorial Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville College, and Daniela Omlor is a Tutorial Fellow at Lincoln College and a Lecturer at Jesus College.

With the contributions:

1

Introduction

XON DE ROS, DANIELA OMLOR

Part I: Encounters and Exchanges
2

María Zambrano and Rosa Chacel: The Paradigms and Paradoxes of Female Modernity

SHIRELY MAGINI

3

In the Dark Night of the Human: Maria Zambrano and the Avant-Garde

INMACULADA MURCIA SERRANO

4

The Anti-Fascist Origins of Poetic Reason: Genealogy of a Reflection on Totalitarianism

ANTOLÍN SÁNCHEZ CUERVO

5

Eros’s Desire: Some Aspects of the Relationship Between José Ángel Valente and María Zambrano

ANTONIO MOLINA FLORES

6

Hope beyond Hope: The Motif of Ruins in María Zambrano and Luis Cernuda

FEDERICO BONADDIO

7

Poetry and Realization: Towards a Knowledge of the Poet’s Place in María Zambrano

ALBERTO SANTAMARÍA

Part II: Identity and Representation
8

Melancholy and Loss in María Zambrano’s Journals

GORETTI RAMÍREZ

9

La tumba de Antígona: Psychoanalysis and Feminism

XON DE ROS

10

Metaphor in María Zambrano: Theory and Practice

ROBERTA JOHNSON

11

About Painting and Dialectical Images of María Zambrano

ELIDE PITTARELLO

12

The Ethics of Exile and Memory in Zambrano

DANIELA OMLOR

13

María Zambrano: Philosophy, Literature, and Democracy

FRANCIS LOUGH