The double death of the author: Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York and the (re)territorialization of poetic voice in Francoist Spain

McCulloch, J. (2013) The double death of the author: Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York and the (re)territorialization of poetic voice in Francoist Spain. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 19(1), pp. 31-52. (doi: 10.1080/14701847.2013.830375)

Abstract

Federico García Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York continues to elicit considerable critical interest. Because of its avant-garde experimentation, it resists all reductive readings and lends itself to a plethora of interpretations on the part of critics and readers who appropriate Lorca for certain ends. My article shows that this process of appropriation is nothing new. In 1945, the Falangist philologist Joaquín de Entrambasaguas, writing during the earliest and most repressive years of Francoism, published a brief review of Poeta en Nueva York for a supplement of the literary journal Cuadernos de Literatura Contemporánea. Here I argue that the review or “Nota preliminar,” as it appears in the journal itself, sets out to appropriate Lorca's poetry for political ends, in an attempt to domesticate Lorca's voice as symptomatic of a deep seated “Spanishness” at a time when Franco's regime was looking to revive the myths of a glorious Spanish past. Using some key theoretical concepts such as “deterritorialization” from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and drawing on the work of Deleuzian philosopher Manuel De Landa, I seek to understand how this process of cultural re-appropriation develops, and what the implications are.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: McCulloch, Dr John
• Authors: McCulloch, J.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts
• Journal Name: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies
• Publisher: Routledge
• ISSN: 1470-1847
• ISSN (Online): 1469-9524