Lorca

4 Jul, 2019 860 Spanish, Portuguese, Galician literatures

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936), author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, who mixed the traditions of Andalusia with the avant-garde. He found his first major success with his Gypsy Ballads, although Dali, once his close friend, mocked him for these, accusing Lorca of being too conservative. He preferred performing his poems to publishing them, and his plays marked a revival in Spanish theatre. He was captured and killed by Nationalist forces at the start of the Civil War, his body never recovered, and it’s been suggested this was punishment for his politics and for being openly gay. He has since been seen as the most important Spanish playwright and poet of the last century.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • Maria Delgado No other episodes
    Professor of Creative Arts at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London
  • Federico Bonaddio No other episodes
    Reader in Modern Spanish at King's College London
  • Sarah Wright No other episodes
    Professor of Hispanic Studies and Screen Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London

Reading list

  • Federico Garcia Lorca
    Reed Anderson (Macmillan, 1984) Google Books →
  • Lorca: The Gay Imagination
    Paul Binding (GMP Publishers, 1985) Google Books →
  • A Companion to Federico Garcia Lorca
    Federico Bonaddio (ed.) (Tamesis, 2007) Google Books →
  • The Face of Spain
    Gerald Brenan (Serif, 2010) Google Books →
  • Sebastian's Arrows: Letters and Mementos of Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca
    Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca (ed. Christopher Maurer) (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
  • Federico Garcia Lorca
    Maria Delgado (Routledge, 2008) Google Books →
  • Lorca: The Theatre Beneath the Sand
    Gwynne Edwards (Marion Boyars, 1980) Google Books →
  • Lorca: Living in the Theatre
    Gwynne Edwards (Peter Owen, 2003) Google Books →
  • The Assassination of Federico Garcia Lorca
    Ian Gibson (Penguin, 1983) Google Books →
  • The Death of Lorca
    Ian Gibson (J. P. O'Hara, 1973) Google Books →
  • Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life
    Ian Gibson (Pantheon Books, 1989) Google Books →
  • The Collected Poems
    Federico Garcia Lorca (ed. Christopher Maurer) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002) Google Books →
  • Deep Song and Other Prose
    Federico Garcia Lorca (trans. Christopher Maurer) (Marion Boyars, 1982) Google Books →
  • Lorca's Legacy: Essays in Interpretation
    Jonathan Mayhew (Routledge, 2018) Google Books →
  • Love, Desire and Identity in the Theatre of Federico Garcia Lorca
    Paul McDermid (Tamesis, 2007) Google Books →
  • Lorca's The Public: A Study of His Unfinished Play (El Publico) and of Love and Death in the Work of Federico Garcia Lorca
    Rafael Martinez Nadal (Calder & Boyars, 1974) Google Books →
  • The Theatre of Garcia Lorca: Text, Performance, Psychoanalysis
    Paul Julian Smith (Cambridge University Press, 1998) Google Books →
  • Lorca: A Dream of Life
    Leslie Stainton (Bloomsbury, 1998)
  • The Trickster-Function in the Theatre of Garcia Lorca
    Sarah Wright (Tamesis, 2000) Google Books →

Related episodes

Programme ID: m0006dss

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006dss

Auto-category: 860.9 (Spanish Literature)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello, Federico García Lorca, 1898 to 1936, is one of the great Spanish writers of the 20th century and his death is still a disturbing mystery.