Lorca's Late Poetry: A Critical Study

Federico García Lorca (1898-1938), is often thought of as a fine lyric poet of the 1920s who then developed into one of Spain's greatest playwrights (1931-36). But other aspects of Lorca's literary career are equally significant: the earlier theatrical pieces, which he had started writing by 1918, the bold, experimental, expressionist plays of 1930-31, and (the subject of this volume) the later poetry written as his powers as a dramatist matured in the 1930s. Professor Anderson's book is the first in any language to focus specifically on Lorca's poetic output from 1931 to 1936. It offers extensive, detailed analyses of all the poetry composed during that period: Diván del Tamarit with its Arab-Andalusian flavour and stylization, the Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, a sustained lament on the death of a bullfighter friend, Seis poemas galegos, and Sonetos, love poetry echoing Petrarch, Shakespeare and Góngora - four collections equal or superior in quality, power and suggestiveness to Lorca's canonic poetical works. Adopting a literary-critical approach based on the close reading of individual texts, with relevant background information, Professor Anderson elaborates on the themes and techniques, imagery and symbolism, strengths and weaknesses, of each poem in the four collections. Thereby he can relate this corpus to the whole of Lorca's work, showing that it cannot be neatly categorized under any of the avant-garde "-isms" prevalent in the 1920s and 1930s. His arguments for a revised appraisal of Lorca's creative development lead to a compelling case for a re-evaluation of his "late poetry". An Appendix gives English translations of all the poems under discussion (other Spanish quotations are translated in the text), and there is a fifteen-page bibliography of primary and secondary material.