The Return of Biography: Leopoldo María Panero’s Letter-Poem to his Father (amid Lessons from Lorca)
Wednesday 21 May, 2-4, KEN: 104 – Lawson Lecture Room
Professor Federico Bonaddio, King’s College London
This lecture centres on Leopoldo María Panero’s letter-poem to his father, Leopoldo Panero, from 1973, which glosses the last poem his father wrote before his death in 1962, entitled ‘Epitaph’. It will consider Leopoldo María’s poem in the context of debates about biography and sentiment in poetry, as well as Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concept of a ‘minor’ literature. It will also refer to the context and character of Lorca’s Poet in New York which, though written some forty years earlier, offers an interesting starting point for the exploration of the Paneros because of its self-conscious treatment of the tension between the poet (personality) and the dominant aesthetic (impersonality).
Federico Bonaddio is Professor of Modern Spanish Studies at King’s College London. He has held positions at the University of Glasgow, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Hull. He has published two monographs on Federico García Lorca: Federico García Lorca: The Poetics of Self-Consciousness (2010) and Federico García Lorca: The Poetry in All Things (2022). He is the editor of A Companion to García Lorca (2007), and he has co-edited several other volumes. His research interests also include modern Spanish culture and film. He is currently working on cultural responses to Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy.