"As Luis Cernuda noted, the strength and the uniqueness of Vicente Aleixandre's surrealist poetry would seem to make him the founder of a new kind of lyric. Indeed, the enigmatic character of Aleixandre's surrealist works has variously baffled, intrigued, and moved readers, and has generally led critics to regard Aleixandre's poetic world as an autonomous system governed by its own rules.

The present study, which focuses on the Nobel Laureate's pre-Civil War masterpiece La Destruccion o el Amor, reconsiders his surrealism from an intertextual perspective, a perspective that examines works of art in the light of the cultural components, or intertexts, that they absorb and reinterpret. Drawing on the theoretical insights of writers such as Harold Bloom, Michael Riffaterre, Gerard Genette, Alastair Fowler, and Richard Dawkins, the present analysis examines intertexts germane to the sense and physiology of Aleixandre's poetry.

These include surrealism and the seminal role of Freud, narrative structure, genre, and lyric ancestors such as Fray Luis de Leon, Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, and Ruben Dario."--BOOK JACKET.