Classical tradition in the poetic work of Rafael Fernández Neda: following the trails of topics and motifs of greco-latin poetry

Abstract

In this work we propose to delimit the classical tradition present in the collection of poems that Tenerife native Rafael Fernández Neda (1833-1909) published in Madrid under the name Auroras (1862) and to trace, specifically, the presence of literary topics typical of Greco-Latin poetry through a literary and discursive analysis. In this collection of poems Neda collected compositions that he had previously published in the Canarian press during the 1950s and others of new composition, as well as some translations of poets of German and French Romanticism that influenced his style. After a rigorous and analytical reading, we realize that the Greco-Latin classics, especially the Latin ones, also left a great mark on Neda's poetic work, manifest above all in the use of literary topics of pastoral, epic and elegiac love poetry. Thus, we have focused on inquiring on the roads and the origin of the influence of the classics in their work and defining and limiting, fundamentally, the classical literary and cultural tradition of the poems to, later, analyze the use of the topics and literary motifs and clarify the authors and the Greco-Roman works that could have influenced the Canarian poet.