Modern Minstrelsy

«Modern Minstrelsy»: «Miguel Hernández and Jacques Brel» is an analogy study of two contemporary writers, the Spanish poet Miguel Hernández and the Belgian «chansonnier» Jacques Brel. Through the tracing of universal thematic parallels in their work, «Modern Minstrelsy» discusses the poetry of Hernández and Brel as affined examples of both a socially oriented contemporary humanism and of a modernized medieval minstrel tradition. Modern and medieval, personal and didactic, violent and tender, the poetry of Hernández and of Brel proclaims the poet's serious societal responsibilities, as spokesman for and about our communal nature.