New Lenses for Lorca: Literature, Art, and Science in the Edad de Plata

New Lenses for Lorca: Literature, Art, and Science in the Edad de plata examines the influence of science in the thought, creative process, writing, and drawing of Federico García Lorca. This book establishes the historical, cultural, and biographical context in which Lorca encountered scientists and their work, and studies the writing and drawing of scientists he came to know at the Residencia de estudiantes in Madrid. Several of Lorca’s contemporaries who were also exploring science’s possibilities for their work in writing, art, and philosophy, including José Ortega y Gasset, Salvador Dalí, and Gregorio Marañón, are read alongside the poet.

By reading particular texts among Lorca’s lectures, letters, poetry, theater, and drawings through the lens of the memoirs, lectures, and drawings of scientists such as Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Pío del Río-Hortega, a working poetics is established for each and comparisons are drawn. References to science in Lorca’s work open a new reading of some of his texts. At the same time, Ramón y Cajal and del Río-Hortega’s drawing and writing are analyzed as plastic and rhetorical works of art. The result is a study of the creative process in artist and scientist alike and their mutual influence.

Cecelia J. Cavanaugh, SSJ, is associate professor of Spanish and dean of the School of Undergraduate Studies at Chestnut Hill College.