(S708) Seminar in Hispanic Studies
Political poster child, cultural icon, artistic genius, defender of the marginal, Federico García Lorca enjoys an almost mythic presence in Spain's cultural identity and is widely considered perhaps the most important modern Spanish writer. Indeed, Lorca’s reach and popularity grew rapidly during his lifetime, but he is one of the few Spanish writers that continues to have an enduring presence in dialogues on contemporary Spanish and Hispanic culture. This seminar will both return to Lorca’s artistic production in an effort to study the multifaceted corpus he created during the 1920s and 30s and analyze how his corpus has been constructed by literary critics.The social, cultural, aesthetic, and political projects of pre-Civil War Spain will contextualize our work with a range of literary and visual texts such as Suites, Canciones, Amor de don Perlimplin, Romancero gitano, Poeta en Nueva York, El público, Viaje a la luna, conferencias, the “Rural Triptic/Trilogy”, and the Sonetos del amor oscuro. We will engage the extensive critical discourse on lorquiana as we analyze the texts, attempting to characterize the critical construction of this corpus and identify new lines of inquiry. With this in mind, we will look at both Lorca’s canonical works as well as less studied pieces that may contest and/or complement current constructions of the author and his work.
Our explorations will be informed by theoretical readings regarding the main issues we will follow throughout the course, such as notions of gender, sexuality, desire, modernity, power, and aesthetic experience. Some of the questions we will deal with include: What projects or practices of the Spanish avant-garde does Lorca engage or contest, or what are the philosophical and aesthetic premises of his work? How does Lorca’s work engage notions of the subaltern and either break or reinforce hegemonic power relations? In what ways does Lorca’s artistic corpus respond to modernization, mechanization, and modernity in Spain and beyond, and how does it dialogue with ongoing debates at the time? How does Lorca’s discourse on gender and sexuality change over time, and in what ways does it respond to gender/sex politics of 1920s and 1930s Spain?
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