La razón poética in the works of María Zambrano

Abstract

In 1988, María Zambrano, a little known writer, became the first woman to receive the Cervantes prize. This prestigious award served to highlight the critical neglect Zambrano's fifty or so years of work had suffered. In recent years criticism has begun to appear in Spanish on specific aspects or individual works but there has been no contextualising overview up to the present. This thesis gives an exposition of Zambrano's idea of razón poética, a concept which provides internal coherence throughout her work. It focuses on three separate yet entwining strands to her narrative: the philosophical background to razón poética, its relation to mystical tradition, and its engagement with feminist theory. The whole constitutes an attempt to illustrate and explain the complex and densely metaphorical nature of her texts.