The myth of the two-faced monarch: meta-poetry and history in Luis Cernuda

Luis Cernuda designs his own version of the dramatic monologue, since he does not create enough distance between his characters and his own voice. In "Silla del rey" he chooses as a character the Spanish monarch Felipe II. The representation of the king is not perfect, and the author sometimes breaks the mask of Philip II to show his own face through the introduction of metapoetic comments more typical of a writer than of a king. Moreover, this character is a paradoxical correlate of Cernuda, since the king and El Escorial were recognized symbols of Franco's rhetoric. In this essay, using the critical theories of Edward Said and Hayden White, I analyze "Silla del rey" and Cernuda's meta-poetic and ironic presence in the poem as rhetorical strategies to criticize Franco's historiographical discourse.