Enunciation Scenographies and Modal Subjects in Contemporary Hispanic Poetry

Abstract

This critical note aims to study some contemporary poems of Hispanic tradition in light of two concepts used in enunciation-centered analysis: “scenography”, a term coined by Dominique Maingueneau, and “modal subject”, an essential category in Alain Rabatel's enunciative model. Enunciation scenography establishes the framework from which the discourse and its peculiarities arise. It is not merely a contextual backdrop of psychosocial tone but a fundamental device for producing meaning. Poetry has constantly resorted to scenographies such as the diary, the conversation, the confession, the epitaph, the letter, the prayer, or the portrait, for example. Subsequently, the uniqueness of each scenography depends on what Alain Rabatel calls the modal subject that is, the textual markers of an enunciator that characterizes, parodies, or stigmatizes a person or a type of ideological discourse. By examining poems by Elvis Guerra (Mexico, 1993), Ricardo Oré (Peru, 1949), Amalia Bautista (Spain, 1962), and Carmen Berenguer (Chile, 1946), the article acknowledges the theoretical importance of these concepts and their role in shaping the tone, point of view, and singularity of the Lyrical subject.