Provides in-depth analysis of the literary work Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba, as well as its importance and critical reception. Includes a chronology of the life and works of the author. The revolutionary genius of Spanish theater, Lorca brought vivid and tragic poetry to the stage with these three powerful dramas. In the play The House of Bernarda Alba, a tyrannical matriarch rules over her house and five daughters, cruelly crushing their hopes and needs. The other plays here also portray female characters whose desires are tragically and violently frustrated: a woman's longing for a child in Yerma, and a bride's yearning for her lover in Blood Wedding. All appeal for freedom and sexual and social equality, and are also passionate defenses of the imagination: in Christopher Maurer's words, 'poetic frama unsurpassed by any writer of our time.'

IB