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The American Agenda

Jonathan Mayhew

in Apocryphal Lorca: Translation, Parody, Kitsch

No study of Lorca's poetry on its own terms can explain why his poetry resonated so strongly in the United States. For an explanation of this resonance, this chapter turns to a set of purely domestic ... More

No study of Lorca's poetry on its own terms can explain why his poetry resonated so strongly in the United States. For an explanation of this resonance, this chapter turns to a set of purely domestic criteria that have little to do with Lorca as he might appear within his own cultural context. Lorca was particularly attractive to poets seeking to define a new variety of American cultural nationalism. He arrived on the scene as an alien figure, strongly identified with a quite different brand of national exceptionalism—that of Spain itself. Far from being an obstacle, however, Lorca's foreignness proved useful to those in search of a form of American cultural nationalism that might stand opposed to cold war politics. Lorca's poetry came to the fore with the poets associated with The New American Poetry, an anthology published in 1960. The contributions of African American and gay male poets are especially noteworthy during this period, but there is also a more generic Lorquismo, characterized by a tone of naive enthusiasm and by a proliferation of abusive citations of the duende.Less

Frank O̓hara's “Lorcaescas”

Jonathan Mayhew

in Apocryphal Lorca: Translation, Parody, Kitsch

This chapter examines the poetry of Frank O'Hara, identifying points of convergence between him and Lorca. It suggests that O'Hara is a more “Lorquian” figure than either Robert Bly or James Wright. ... More

This chapter examines the poetry of Frank O'Hara, identifying points of convergence between him and Lorca. It suggests that O'Hara is a more “Lorquian” figure than either Robert Bly or James Wright. He belongs, in at least one or two facets of his work, to the tradition of bardic, charismatic twentieth-century figures like Mayakovsky, Lorca, and Ginsberg. This connection may be just as arbitrary as the conventional linking of Lorca to the deep image poets. The choice of interpretive frameworks is not natural or given, and literary traditions are always somewhat arbitrary, constructed after the fact in a selective process. At the very least, though, an exploration of O'Hara's Lorquismo has a heuristic value, showing that the divisions between rival schools of contemporary American poetry are not as clearcut as they might appear.Less

The Revivalist and the Folklorist

Corey Gibson

in The Voice of the People: Hamish Henderson and Scottish Cultural Politics

This chapter sets out Henderson’s conception of the folk tradition, and its manifestations in his work as a folk revivalist and as a folklore scholar. In collecting songs and redistributing them, ... More

This chapter sets out Henderson’s conception of the folk tradition, and its manifestations in his work as a folk revivalist and as a folklore scholar. In collecting songs and redistributing them, Henderson analysed this tradition whilst also contributing to it. His work can therefore be approached as an interrogation of the limits of the individual’s own cultural ‘mediation’. This dynamic both liberated Henderson’s political imagination and plagued it with doubts over the manipulation and affectations of folk ‘voices’. Henderson’s own contributions to the field of folklore studies are placed in the context of on-going scholarly discourse, but also in relation to his own work as one who sought to operationalize a culture he was convinced belonged to the ages and was immune to interference. Federico García Lorca’s comments on the duende, and the vital folk culture of Scotland’s travelling people helped Henderson to glimpse the unbounded reach of the folk tradition and, consequently, the limited scope of the folklorist-revivalist. Through each of these chapters, Henderson’s struggle with the endless distance between himself – the poet, songwriter, folk revivalist, and folklorist – and the political and cultural lives of ‘the people’, is a constant feature.Less

In Search of Duende: Lorca on Spanish Soul

Alejandro Nava

in In Search of Soul: Hip-Hop, Literature, and Religion

This chapter discusses Federico García Lorca's concept of soul—what he called duende. As the muse of Lorca's imagination, duende transported his poetry and music to great heights and simultaneously ... More

This chapter discusses Federico García Lorca's concept of soul—what he called duende. As the muse of Lorca's imagination, duende transported his poetry and music to great heights and simultaneously agitated and menaced the powers of his age. Shaped and created in a similar likeness to “soul,” duende is a Spanish translation of the creative grace that transfigures suffering into some of the finest achievements in music, poetry, religion, and the arts. To Lorca's fascist critics, duende was the stuff of heresy, a kind of disease and deviation from the canonical values of society that if not checked could lead to full-blown plague. Critics of this sort sought to sanitize or sterilize Lorca's pen of all such rebellious instincts.Less

A Strategy for Self-Expression: The Puppet-Mistress

in Role-Play and the World as Stage in the Comedia

This chapter analyses the use of role-play as a strategy for self-expression in Pedro Calderón de la Barca's La dama duende and Lope de Vega's La discreta enamorada. It explains that the eponymous ... More

This chapter analyses the use of role-play as a strategy for self-expression in Pedro Calderón de la Barca's La dama duende and Lope de Vega's La discreta enamorada. It explains that the eponymous women in these plays use role-play to escape spiritual destruction in a developed and strategic fashion, and that their intentions are positive and forward-looking from the start. The chapter also discusses their success in the use of role-play as a strategic stepping stone to success to ultimately undermine patriarchy's expectations of their long-term role without marginalizing themselves.Less

Disturbing Effects of the Periodical Press

in Ideological Hesitancy in Spain 1700-1750

During at least the first twenty years of the eighteenth century, the periodical press in Spain did not have the power to disrupt established ideas. In the next decade, the clandestine El Duende de ... More

During at least the first twenty years of the eighteenth century, the periodical press in Spain did not have the power to disrupt established ideas. In the next decade, the clandestine El Duende de Madrid (The Madrid Elf) circulated privately in dealing with political matters. Its influence was thus limited to the private sphere. Branches of free-range journalism intended for the general public had yet to assume an organised form. The periodical press was considered state-controlled, reporting newspapers or astrological almanacs. Strict state censorship of the early decades, from 1701, confined the weekly Gaceta de Madrid, and, by extension, the provincial newspapers, to approved news items. These newspapers reported politically national news that was paternally concerned with topics such as Spain's victories in war, or the health, movements, and activities of the Royal Family.Less

Michael Portillo’s Great Railway Journeys: Granada to Salamanca (1999)

Kathleen Riley

in Imagining Ithaca: Nostos and Nostalgia Since the Great War

This chapter follows Michael Portillo’s pilgrimage to his late father’s native Spain as part of the BBC television series Great Railway Journeys. Luis Gabriel Portillo was a poet and law professor ... More

This chapter follows Michael Portillo’s pilgrimage to his late father’s native Spain as part of the BBC television series Great Railway Journeys. Luis Gabriel Portillo was a poet and law professor who stayed loyal to the Republican government when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936. A liberal intellectual and a Catholic idealist, he refused to carry a rifle at the front for fear of killing one of his brothers, five of whom were enlisted on the Nationalist side. Instead he ran messages as a courier and acted as a political instructor to the troops. In January 1939, shortly before Madrid fell to Franco, he escaped across the Pyrenees, reaching England as an asylum-seeker. For two decades he was unable to set foot in Spain. Michael’s moving Telemachan odyssey took him back to the land of his father’s heroes, to the village of his formative years, to the front line of the civil war, and to the ancient university city of Salamanca, the Ithaca of which Luis dreamt during his long years in exile. The chapter also looks at examples of Luis Portillo’s deeply nostalgic poetry of exile, from his published volume Ruiseñor del destierro.Less

Claustrophobia: Totalitarianism and the Great Depression, 1920–1936

R. Keith Schoppa

in The Twentieth Century: A World History

This chapter focuses on two of the three-tiered political identities, specifically the power of individual control (localism) and the force of nationalism. After the Great War, the 1920s roared with ... More

This chapter focuses on two of the three-tiered political identities, specifically the power of individual control (localism) and the force of nationalism. After the Great War, the 1920s roared with the possibilities of wealth, pleasure, the good life. Women seemed to be at the center of things: the “flapper,” homemaker, and female suffrage worlds. Yet national ambitions of Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union were put on the fast track of totalitarianism working by way of fascism, monarchical dictatorship, and communism. The policies of those four placed thousands of people in “iron houses” to be suffocated, or, more likely, executed. To deal with these tragedies, the long shot seemed perhaps to be the wide-ranging individualism of Lu Xun, the “duende” of Garcia Lorca, and the initiative of countless others to try to exorcise nationalism run amok.Less