The esthetic evolution of nature in the poetic work by José de Siles

Abstract

José de Siles (1856-1911) was a writer who suffered the bohemian lifestyle and his lyric was part of the first Spanish Modernism. This work aims at approaching his poetry and analysing how the topic of nature is altered in it throughout an aesthetic evolution from the Classic taste through the Romantic and to the modern poetry. We will see how Siles recurs to locus amoenus to describe his village, Puente Genil, and idealise nature following the poetic model of the Renaissance; how the countryside reflects subjective states of the poet, like in the Naturphilosophie and the Romantic poetry. Finally, we will also focus on how Siles abandoned the Classic idealisation and the Romantic evasion of nature to talk about impurity and leave it aside, since the space of interest for the modern poetry will be the city.