Queering Poetic Subjects: Gender, Space and Time in García Lorca's Late Poetry

Abstract

This article focuses on a selection of poems from Federico García Lorca’s 1930s poetic works, Diván del Tamarit and Sonetos del amor oscuro, to argue that, by adding a non-normative element to his exploration of desire, Lorca queers poetic subjects and articulates gender, space and time in transgressive and innovative ways. Both poetic works reveal a sense of ambiguity made explicit as an integral part of the poetic artifice, together with spatiotemporal transgressions and re-appropriations of various poetic traditions, which reinforce the constructed and destructive nature of heteronormative discourses around gender and desire. Through close textual reading, I examine how Lorca creates an indeterminate and epenthetic poetic realm where the limits of desire and death are distorted and bodies, emotional states and spatiotemporal coordinates are unstable and fluid.