Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo
Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo (1836–70)occupies a most important place among 19th‐century Spanish poets, although he made his living as a journalist. He also contributed some literary prose of which Leyendas (Legends, 1871) is his best‐known work. This collection is made up of 28 short narrations which are based on popular Spanish legends, folk motifs found in European and other literatures, mythological characters (especially Nordic), and typical romantic and Gothic elements. For example, in ‘El Miserere’ (1862), Bécquer employed the motif of the monks who, after being slaughtered, return to their monastery as ghosts; magical transformations of human beings into animals take place in ‘La corza blanca’ (‘The White Doe’, 1863), while the popular folk motif of the hunter who falls in love with a nymph and meets his death in the fountain she inhabits plays a major role in ‘Los ojos verdes’ (‘The Green...
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