The scenography of death in contemporary poetrythe case of Vicent Andrés Estellés

Abstract

From the perspective of new studies on spatiality, which favours the concept of place (as opposed to the broader concept of space), representations of death are linked to specific places that are typical of each culture. In our current culture, places such as the sanatorium, the hospital, the dying house, the coffin and the cemetery are often related to the concept of heterotopia designed years ago by Michel Foucault. Some types of heterotopia that are related to death have a high performance in the semiotics of contemporary poetry. In his work, the Catalan poet Vicent Andrés Estellés (1924–1993) depicts scenes of death that integrate many of these places, objects, characters and sequences of actions. This scenography, which is strongly shaped by metaphorical and metonymic mappings, is an essential ingredient of his poetic semiosis as part of the treatment of the subject matter of death and dying.