Product Description

Bernarda Alba is a widow, and her five daughters are incarcerated in mourning along with her. One by one they make a bid for freedom, with tragic consequences. Lorca's tale depicts the repression of women within Catholic Spain in the years before the war.Edited with invaluable student notes - a must for students of Spanish drama

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #178588 in Books
• Published on: 1998-08-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Federico Garcia Lorca was born in 1898, in Andalusia, Spain. A poet and dramatist, and also a gifted painter and pianist, his early popular ballads earned him the title of 'poet of the gypsies'. In 1930 he turned his attention to theatre, visiting remote villages and playing classic and new works for peasant audiences. In 1936, shortly after the outbreak of Civil War, he was murdered by Nationalist partisans. His body was never found. Gwynne Edwards is a specialist in Spanish theatre and cinema, until recently Professor of Spanish at the University of Aberystwyth. His books include: Lorca: The Theatre Beneath the Sand; Lorca: Living in the Theatre; Dramatists in Perspective: Spanish Theatre in the Twentieth Century; The Discreet Art of Luis Bunuel: and Almodovar: Labyrinths of Passion. He has also translated and adapted more than forty plays from Spanish, French and Italian, many of which have been staged at major theatres in Britain and the United States. He has published three collections of Lorca plays with Methuen Drama, together with student editions of Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba, and also collections of seventeenth-century Spanish and contemporary Spanish-American plays adapted from the correspondence and prose writings of Dylan Thomas.

Customer Reviews

Excellent
I don't really want to write a review on La Casa de Bernarda Alba/The house of Bernarda Alba, but I do want any english speaker studying this book to understand how much of a help it is. It eliminates flicking through the dictionary every five minutes. I only started studying spanish last year and this is the first piece of spanish literature I have read. For anyone who is in the same boat as I am.........I would highly recommend this book!!

A lesson in society and drama
I read this play in a mixture of English and Spanish, taking full advantage of the Methuen Spanish/English edition. This was my first Lorca play and, after studying the braceros and latifundistas of Andalucia in the years preceeding the Civil War of 1936, I found I could easily relate to the characters and plot of the play. As a tragedy, this play allows one to enter the tortured soul of Lorca who, it has been said, identifies most with Martirio, the family and society out cast always searching jealously for love. Bernada and her family epitomise the tradition attitudes as regards to the role of women, religion and marriage in Spain during that period. Lorca's last play before his murder by fascist rebels in 1936 is a must for any Spanish student as I was enthralled.

an eye opening story of women in1930's Spain.
A must read for any Spanish student intending to study Spanish literature in the future