A transition from a largely oral tradition to a world in which information and culture were transmitted by way of written or printed documents. Contemporary theory has done much to elucidate the cultural and aesthetic implications of this transition. Utilizing concepts derived from such theorists as Derrida, Ong, and Austin, this study examines how writing and inscription are foregrounded and problematized in five Golden Age dramas: El villano en su rincon, by Lope de.
Vega; La estrella de Sevilla, of disputed authorship; El ejemplo mayor de la desdicha, by Mira de Amescua; Cautela contra cautela, by Tirso de Molina; and La cisma de Inglaterra, by Calderon de la Barca.
The Golden Age of Spanish drama extends from the close of the 15th century to the death of Calderón in 1681. During that time, the humanists, as dramatists, followed Italy's artistic awakening direction, and imitated Classical drama. With originality and dreams of greatness, they subverted the nature of tragedy; modified the approach of Comedy and invented the New Play, the Comedia Nueva. In it the poet-dramatists introduced important modificaitons of realism, included imagined reality, Christian symbolism and theatricality, as artistic truth. They elaborate all kinds of syntheses. For this reason, the Spanish Golden Age theater can be viewed as part of a tradition that includes the Greco-Roman comedy and tragedy, Christian tragedy, and the authentic national literary and dramatic tendencies. The entries in this reference book explore the fascinating history of the Golden Age of Spanish drama. The volume begins with an introductory overview of the literary, cultural, and historical contexts that shaped dramatic writing of the period. The book then presents alphabetically arranged essays for nineteen significant Spanish dramatists of the Golden Age. Each essay is written by an expert contributor and includes biographical information, an analysis and evaluation of major works, a discussion of critical response to the plays, and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. The volume closes with a selected general bibliography of central critical studies of Golden Age Spanish drama.
The Reception Theory orientation discusses how the recast was received in its time; performance reviews contemporary with the new versions of old plays indicate the controversy elicited between those who believed, on the one hand, that the "classics" should be preserved as they have been handed down, and on the other, that a work of art is never "finished" and is always open to new stagings and interpretations. Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, and others have been and continue to be reinterpreted in the light of new literary, social, and political orientations.
This volume explores the impact of printing on the European theatre in the period 1480-1880 and shows that the printing press played a major part in the birth of modern theatre.
"This anthology of "new" approches to literary study takes its name from Lope de Vega's Arte nuevo de hacer comedias. Like Lope's poem on poetics, this volume also operates as a defense, in the sense that many of the articles include a defense of the usefulness of literary theory in general, and of their chosen approach in particular, for enriching the study of the comedia." "In these essays, it is the not quite new art of "estudiar" rather than "hacer" drama that is the central concern, the contributors defending theoretical innovations approximately twenty years after James Parr, in the pages of Hispania, issued his challenge to Hispanists to update their approach. This volume, which combines innovative scholarship with the "metacriticism" that many critics advocate in all literary study, is directed both the students of literature and to scholars who wish to expand their knowledge of the many different areas of theoretical inquiry that comediantes are currently exploring."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This study of the social content of the only Spanish epic surviving in more or less complete form provides a means of assessing the motives and intentions of the protagonist and of other characters. Chapters are devoted to such themes as the significance of kinship and lineage; amity as a system of fictive kinship, personal honor, and public organization; the importance of women and the meaning and function of marriage, dowry, and related practices; the emergence of polity as the result of a rivalry of social, legal, and economic systems; and the implications, within an essentially kin-ordered world, of the poem's notions of shame, honor, status, and social inequality.
