ABSTRACT
Federico Garcia Lorca's plays, poems, and lectures remain in the shadow of the Lorca myth, a powerful combination of cultural and political symbolism that threatens to bury his achievements under a mountain of mystifications. A genuine admiration for the richness and variety of Lorca's work often shades into an uncritical sacralization of his authorial subjectivity. Along with Picasso's painting, Lorca himself is undoubtedly one of the most resonant symbols of the Spanish Civil War. The horses and bulls seen in the Contra el Guernica are staples of Lorca's own poetic imagery. One set of centripetal adaptations and interpretations of Lorca keeps him bound to an Andalusian context by exploring his relations to the world of cante jondo and the duende. The push-and-pull between centripetal and centrifugal forces in Lorca's reception roughly parallels the distinction between the neo-popular and the avant-garde Lorca.
