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Historically, the literary production of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama) has scarcely been studied. In the twentieth century the region saw a rebirth of its literary production during the sixties and seventies, especially in the area of poetry. In part due to the violent conflicts that took place during this time, many critics, particularly Marxist critics, took an interest in the politically subversive poetic production of Central America. This type of poetry, which belongs to the category of “committed” poetry, clearly benefited from their interest, but it also created the mistaken impression that the only important poetic movement was that of the “committed” poets. The reality is much more complex, for writing in the same time frame as the “committed” poets were lyric poets who often concerned themselves with universal themes. The presence of these two tendencies in the poetry of Central America and the interaction that exists between them is a topic which remains barely touched upon. In addition, the current state of Central American poetry—severely lacking in critical analyses—has created problems in the classification of its poets, which has made it difficult to recognize the different poetic tendencies found in this region today.
My dissertation has two main objectives: to give a global overview of the current state of modern Central American poetry, emphasizing the problems of classification that exist in this field, and to argue that the two main poetic currents—the “committed” and the lyric-present in Central America today have co-existed since the 1950s, influencing and critiquing each other. Through a comparative analysis of selected poems from the work of Ernesto Cardenal (Nicaragua), Roque Dalton (El Salvador), Jorge Debravo (Costa Rica) and David Escobar Galindo (El Salvador), the defining characteristics of each poetic current are clarified and the similarities, as well as the differences between them, are highlighted.