Iberian humour as inspiration for João Cabral de Melo Neto’s Poetry

Abstract

In spite of the great amount of critical works based on João Cabral de Melo Neto’s poetry, its underlying humor —an aspect the poet considered of the most relevant to his work— has yet to be analyzed in great depth. The present article presents and discusses a small sample of the use of the so called infundio sevillano, a satirical way of using language and a set of particular features that served as a model for João Cabral to create poems that shed a light on the prolific literary relationship established between himself, Sevilla, its inhabitants and its culture.