From Granada to Havana

Federico García Lorca, the avant-garde, and orientalism

José L. Venegas

pp. 87-111

in: Tania Gentic, Francisco LaRubia-Prado (eds), Imperialism and the wider atlantic, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

This essay explores Federico García Lorca's work through the lens of Orientalism. In his idealization of flamenco deep song, gypsy culture, and Granada's Arabic past, Lorca stressed Andalusia's Oriental roots while engaging in the widespread avant-garde practice of turning to "primitive" art for inspiration. Daringly blending the archaic and the modern, he debunked José Ortega y Gasset's denigration of Andalusia as a backward land incompatible with vanguard art. Simultaneously, Lorca's iconoclastic Orientalism provided a framework to understand cultural exchange across the Hispanic Atlantic beyond limiting colonial and postcolonial paradigms.

Cited authors

Ortega y Gasset José

García Lorca Federico