A pathbreaking account of the influence and context of Andalusian life and art in the poetry and drama of Federico Garcia Lorca. Andalusia was the central feature and influence in the life and writings of the twentieth-century author, musician, and artist, Federico Garcia Lorca. Rooted in his native region, which both captivated and shaped him, Lorca maintained that "The better a writer learns how to interpret the landscape, the greater the artist he will be." Blessed with an acute historical sense of a region where the past is both present and enduring, Lorca proved himself sensitive and articulate enough to interpret "the emotion of the landscape" in all of his creative work. For Lorca, Andalusia was a landscape not only of place but of people. Through exhaustive research and painstaking readings in a wide range of anthologies of Andalusian folk culture and collections of popular verse, author C. Brian Morris reveals how Lorca transformed and veiled real people and real places in his poetry and drama. Exploring subjects ranging from medieval ballads to flower and plant lore, he further investigates the relationship between Lorca and the writings of other Andalusian-born authors, as well as traditional Andalusian poetry and song.

Juxtaposing this material with well-chosen quotations from Lorca's works, Morris provides myriad examples of analogy and reminiscence that will inform and enlighten both general readers and Lorca specialists.