Authority, power, and dramatic genre in the theater of Federico Garcia Lorca

The dissertation is a study of the different manifestations of authority and power present in the theater of Federico Garcia Lorca: familial, social/sexual, religious/spiritual, economic, and spatial. I focus on these nuclei of authority and power using a three-fold methodology: defining them in critical and theoretical terms; discussing how they function within a given theatrical genre (farce, poetic tragedy, and drama); and showing the consequences of this typology of authority and power. My dissertation shows how authority and power in themselves account for much of the tension and catharsis in Lorca's theater. Although Lorca's regionalism is given its due, I propose that his theatrical dynamics based on the dichotomy of authority and power make his work of universal importance, ultimately closer to Ibsen than to Spanish literary history.