Literary Devices and Federico García Lorca's Poetics

Literary Resources and Rhetorical Devices

The following rhetorical devices are essential tools for poetic expression:

• Polysyndeton: The repetition of conjunctions (and, e, o) to slow the statement.
• Sensory Images: Each of our senses is directly related to descriptive language.
  • Visual Static: "Pink flowers decorate."
  • Moving Visual: "The water runs close to the soul."
  • Other types: Auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory.
• Synesthesia: Sensory images are intertwined, such as a "blue and fragrant morning."
• Metaphor: The poet identifies two elements that have a quality in common: "A thousand tambourines of glazed pierced the night."
• Antithesis: The use of antonyms or contrasted ideas.
• Personification or Prosopopoeia: Encouraging or attributing human behavior to inanimate objects; for example, "things are looking at her and she cannot look at them" (from Romance Sonámbulo).
• Comparison (Simile): A relation of comparison where there is a link such as "how" or "where."
• Gradation: An enumeration of emotions or concepts in a progressive order: "one amending ground, smoke, powder, shadow, nothing."
• Alliteration: Repetition of the same sounds to achieve visual and sound effects: "but I no longer am I, nor is my house mine" (from Romance Sonámbulo).
• Anaphora: Repetition of the initial word of two or more verses.
• Repetition: The repetition of the same word.
• Ellipsis: The omission in speech or writing of one or more elements that are needed for the grammatical construction, although they are not necessary for the language.
• Parallelism: Repetition of the same syntactic structure: "leaving a trail of blood, leaving a trail of tears" (from Romance Sonámbulo).
• Irony: Expression of an idea by its opposite; it is used when one wants to give an opinion contrary to what is manifested.

Federico García Lorca and the Generation of '27

Federico García Lorca was born in 1898, a "disaster year" because Spain lost its last colonies in America. Born in Granada, Spain, he moved from his hometown at age 21. Traveling to Europe, the USA, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, and Cuba, he was a poet, painter, musician, and juggler, full of joy and surprising sadness. In 1919, he moved to Madrid to the Residencia de Estudiantes.

The Generation of '27

Around 300 years after the death of Góngora, a group of poets—including Lorca, Guillén, Alonso, Salinas, Diego, and Alberti—paid tribute to him and lifted him as their poetic banner. This movement has been called the Creation of the Forefront, given that the 1920s hosted the majority of European avant-garde movements (Forefront: progress in a literary or political group, etc.).

Nature of Avant-Garde Literature

Avant-garde literature shows the desire for originality through:

• Innovative Language: A focus on new linguistic forms.
• Anti-romanticism: The writer avoids sentimentalism.
• Airtight Art: Art is becoming more exclusive; the poet is no longer directed to the majority and has resigned from being the spokesman of the people, moving away from the great mass of readers.
• Authenticity: A search for genuine expression.
• Surrealism: The artist relies on a reality that is no longer comprehensive realism.
• Insignificance: The art must lack any specific aesthetic purpose; the artist plays with art.
• Metaphor: Used for the evasion of reality or to change it.