My latest book is Apocryphal Lorca (2009), a study of Lorca's influence on poetry of the US. My next will be Lorca and Modernity, a study that attempts to answer the question of what it means for Spanish literature that Federico García Lorca is the major modern poet in this particular tradition. There are several problems I have to sort out.

(1) Within Spain itself, Lorca is not the major influence or the high modernist par excellence. That would be Juan Ramón Jiménez. So is my reading of Lorca too much influenced by my status as a US Hispanist?

(2) My argument is that Spanish versions of Lorca are essentially weak readings. Simplyfying greatly, the Spanish Lorca is a political myth and a minor neopopularist. I also have to refute the notion that the avant-garde Lorca is the interesting one, while the neopopularist Lorca is just folklore. Ironically, the Americans have seen this, even in their simplifications.

(3) How does my argument relate to traditional ideas that see Spanish modernity as essentially defective (because not modern enough)? I don't want to be repeating that kind of argument, made by Philip Silver in La casa de Anteo, for example. At the same time, the emphasis on Lorca as an archaic poet fits nicely with the reactionary Unamuno line that rejects modernity. (When Unamuno says that Spain should Hispanize Europe rather than Europeanizing itself, for example.) María Zambrano, Ortega's student, actually follows the Unamuno line more than Ortega's more Europeanizing model.

(4) Silver sees Cernuda as the high romantic Spain never had; I am making that argument for Lorca, essentially. But then I have to displace Cernuda from his position. That shouldn't be too hard.

I don't want to repeat the argument of Apocryphal Lorca. At the same time, without having written that I wouldn't be in the position to write Lorca and Modernity. It really is the logical next step for me.