Lorca After Life

by Noel Valis

Overview

A reflection on Federico García Lorca’s life, his haunting death, and the fame that reinvigorated the marvelous in the modern world
 
“A galaxy of critical insights into the cultural shock waves circling and crisscrossing Lorca’s execution and his unknown resting place, there is not a single book on Lorca like this one.”—Andrés Zamora, Vanderbilt University
 
There is something fundamentally unfinished about the life and work of Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), and not simply because his life ended abruptly. Noël Valis reveals how this quality gives shape to the ways in which he has been continuously reimagined since his death. Lorca’s execution at the start of the Spanish Civil War was not only horrific but transformative, setting in motion many of the poet’s afterlives. He is intimately tied to both an individual and a collective identity, as the people’s poet, a gay icon, and fabled member of a dead poets’ society. The specter of his violent death continues to haunt everything connected to Lorca, fueling the desire to fill in the gaps in the poet’s biography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300257861
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	04/26/2022
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Noël Valis is professor and director of undergraduate studies for Spanish at Yale University. She is the author of Sacred Realism: Religion and the Imagination in Modern Spanish Narrative.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Part 1

1 Why Dead Poets Matter 29

2 Lorca's Grave 69

3 The People's Poet and the Right 99

Part 2

4 Fabulous Fag (I), or the Politics of Celebrity Murder 157

5 Fabulous Fag (II), or the Celebrity of Sex 186

6 Fabulous Fag (III), or a Face in the Crowd 231

Postscript 287

Notes 293

Bibliography 363

Index 427

Editorial Reviews

Brilliant and meticulously researched.”—Luis Fernández Cifuentes, Times Literary Supplement

“Lorca After Life defamiliarizes the writer by evoking something of the marvelous that characterizes his life, work, and times and that prevents us from ever fully comprehending him, whatever that would mean. . . . Lorca After Life is anything but predictable and does not back away from productive provocation.”—Jeffrey Zamostny, Romance Quarterly

“[An] exceptionally detailed study.”—Alan Contreras, Gay & Lesbian Review

“Lorca After Life is a compelling and engaging work on every level and should be on the reading list of everyone who wants to learn more about the Spanish poet, and how literary afterlives are always deeply ideological and heavily politicized.”—Bulletin of Spanish Studies

2023 PROSE Award winner in the Literature category

“A galaxy of critical insights into the cultural shock waves circling and crisscrossing Lorca’s execution and his unknown resting place, there is not a single book on Lorca like this one.”—Andrés Zamora, Vanderbilt University

“An example of cultural history at its best, Valis’s superbly written exploration of Lorca’s contested afterlives demonstrates once again why she is our leading scholar of modern Spanish letters.”—Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Columbia University

“Noël Valis elucidates the enduring appeal of the great Andalusian writer. Arguing that the bold nature of his gifts could not have been adequately appreciated in his brief life, she maintains that only the vastness of death can accommodate our growing understanding of Lorca’s innovative accomplishments.”—Jaime Manrique, author of Eminent Maricones

From the Publisher