The Trickster-Function in the Theatre of García Lorca

Abstract

The Trickster-Function in the Theatre of Garcia Lorca. By Sarah Wright. London: Tamesis, 2000. 149 pages. Relying upon literary theory, anthropology, and psychoanalysis, this study uses the trickster image to penetrate largely unexplored aspects of Lorca's theater. the themes of androgyny, male fantasy, masochism, masquerade, and the carnivalesque. The book examines for the most part Lorca's experimental works-Amor de Don Perlimplin con Belisa en su jardin, Asi que pasen cinco anos, and El publico-as well as the less prominently studied El sueno de la vida (Comedia sin titulo), Retablillo de Don Cristobal, Drag6n, and El loco y la loca. La zapa.tera prodigiosa and Bodas de sangre are the only commercial works to receive extensive commentary. While this study offers an examination of themes that have long been overlooked in Lorca criticism and thus is important in suggesting interesting avenues of approach (the psychoanalytic themes developed here are more felicitous than those in Paul Julian Smith's The Theatre of Garcia Lorca: Text, Performance, Psychoanalysis), it is unfortunately burdened by an over-dependence on source material. Lorca at times seems to be a mere embodiment of Lacan, Freud, Deleuze, etc. rather than a playwright with original insights into what are-at the time Lorca writes his plays and even in the present day-open questions. The trickster figure can be found wherever there is a literary or an oral folk tradition and characteristically is the protagonist in a plot involving switches in gender, shape-shifting, or the mischievous intermingling of the sacred and the profane. The trickster mocks order and takes pleasure in the confusion of boundaries, often serving as a symbol of duality, which is in turn related to the relationship between life and death. The trickster is also prominently associated with some of the stock characters from the Commedia dell'arte, especially Harlequin. Wright identifies a diverse repertoire of characters that fulfill this function in Lorca's theater. The initial section of the study focuses on prologuistas and other trickster-figures whose role is to obfuscate and delay the narrative, while at the same time to revel in poetic creation. The prologuista (often named the Autor) is defined as an agent provocateur who draws the audience and characters into a dialectical relationship with one another. Progressively, the plays under discussion can be understood as providing a meta-theatrical space for staging a dialogue between audience and characters. The trickster-- function encourages the audience to enter the space of the plays in order to confront theatrical issues. The second and third sections address the themes of visual time, the body, and theater itself. The three chapters of the second section address the limits of gender in focusing on femininity, masculinity, and androgyny. …