Mourning and exile in Federico García Lorca and Jawad Al-Assadi’s theater

Abstract

This study examines how and why Jawad al-Assadi’s theater is similar to but different from Federico García Lorca’s, and it introduces al-Assadi to a broader audience on a global scale as it compares his work to that of a well-known Spanish poet and playwright. This thesis is the first comparative study that examines the influence of García Lorca on al-Assadi primarily by focusing on the themes of mourning and exile in both playwrights’ written texts. This research finds that the melancholic women in both playwrights’ plays repeatedly mourn their dead family members, and unconsciously mourn their own marginalization and exile. In contrast to García Lorca’s plays, al-Assadi’s protagonists are able to leave together their oppressive house-country (except in Sonata al-Junun, whose two main characters die). The theme of mourning is an influence of the milieu in which both playwrights grew up: Catholic Granada and Shi’a Karbala. The cruelty in al-Assadi’s plays exceeds that in García Lorca’s, and this cruelty, which borders on theatrical, is an allegory for the playwrights’ societies, where they lived as marginalized and exiled people.