Immortalized in death by The Clash, Pablo Neruda, Salvador Dalí, Dmitri Shostakovich and Lindsay Kemp, Federico García Lorca's spectre haunts both contemporary Spain and the cultural landscape beyond. Institutionalized as of one of the Spanish language’s most resonant dramatists, his plays have functioned as a complex signifier of Spain on the international stage. This innovative study of his plays – ranging from his largely unknown early works to his rural trilogy, considers both their performance histories and the performance indicators encoded within the texts. In delineating how performance has affected the ways in which we approach Lorca’s life as well as his work, this book considers the ways in which his short but eventful life has proved an enduring trope in reading his poetic and dramatic output. Covering a wide range of his plays, the study merges incisive textual analysis with performance histories that indicate the strategies used by directors when staging plays as formally and conceptually different as Blood Wedding and The Public. The book concludes by tracing the ways in which his life, death and poetry have been reconstructed through the performing and visual arts – in the poetry of his contemporaries, in the canvases of Dalí, in the laments of flamenco artists and rock icons like Camarón de la Isla, The Pogues, and The Clash. Both a treatment of Lorca’s plays and their production histories and his status as a cultural icon, this study offers a fresh examination of one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century theatre.
“An outstanding and completely contemporary account of Lorca and the ‘Lorca phenomenon’, this book provides a sophisticated and accessible analysis of Lorca’s pivotal position in Spanish and, now, in global culture”
Professor Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought, Royal Holloway, University of London / Series Editor, Routledge Critical Thinkers
“Federico Garcia Lorca is a book worthy of serious attention… Fortunately Federico Garcia Lorca with his masterful plays and poetry survives the industry that grows around him. Maria M. Delgado has given us a fine rendering of how and why.”
Mark Statman, PAJ: A Journal of Art and Performance, No. 92 (2009)
“La profesora María Delgado ha recorrido este camino sin caer en la hagiografía ni en la autopsia, y los espectros lorquianos que captura en su fascinante libro emergen con la fuerza del que conoce muy de cerca la extensa bibliografía sobre la dramaturgia de Lorca y del que posee a la vez talento dramático para componer un nuevo retrato del mito que sirve de índice a todos los demás mitos. Es un placer reconocer que el nuevo libro de María Delgado ofrece una síntesis accesible y fiable para el que entra en contacto con Lorca por primera vez, y enormemente enriquecedora para el especialista.”
Irene Gómez Castellano, Stichomythia, No.7 (2009)
“a fresh cross-disciplinary focus … recommended”
J.M. Pullido Mendoza, Anales de la literatura española contemporánea, Vol. 34, No. 2 (2009)