The Theatre of Garcia Lorca: Text, Performance, Psychoanalysis by Paul Julian Smith (University of Cambridge)
The Theatre of Garcia Lorca offers radical new readings of his major plays, drawing on cultural studies, women's and gay studies, psychoanalysis, and previously unexamined archival material. It provides fascinating historical accounts of productions in different times and places, from New York in the 1930s to Madrid in the 1980s. It also juxtaposes Lorca with major figures such as Gregorio Maranon, Langston Hughes, Andre Gide, and Lluis Pasqual, enabling us to see his theatre in a new light. In addition, the book presents a new psychoanalytic reading of the plays, which returns to Freud's early clinical texts. Examining the complex and productive intersection of history and fantasy that is characteristic both of Garcia Lorca's theatre and of the cult to which it has given rise, this study offers a thorough reassessment of Lorca's work.