Lope de Vega's Comedias de Tema Religioso

Lope de Vega's Comedias de Tema Religioso
Author: Elaine M. Canning
Publisher: Tamesis Books
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2004
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9781855660304

Lope's use of self-reverential devices in Lo fingido verdadero and La buena guarda serves to highlight the illusory nature of life and the relationship between lo verdadero and lo divino which lie at the heart of the theocentric world view of seventeenth-century Spain. The conflicting imperatives of human and divine love and the issue of identity are features of all of the plays. Furthermore, it is illustrated that the interplay between illusion and reality and the relationship between playwright and audience are crucial to Lope's dramatic output."--Jacket.

Role-play and the World as Stage in the Comedia

Role-play and the World as Stage in the Comedia
Author: Jonathan Thacker
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2002-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780853235583

The theatrum mundi metaphor was well-known in the Golden Age, and was often employed, notably by Calderón in his religious theatre. However, little account has been given of the everyday exploitation of the idea of the world as stage in the mainstream drama of the Golden Age. This study examines how and why playwrights of the period time and again created characters who dramatize themselves, who re-invent themselves by performing new roles and inventing new plots within the larger frame of the play. The prevalence of metatheatrical techniques among Golden Age dramatists, including Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca and Guillén de Castro, reveals a fascination with role-playing and its implications. Thacker argues that in comedy, these playwrights saw role-playing as a means by which they could comment on and criticize the society in which they lived, and he reveals a drama far less supportive of the social status quo in Golden Age Spain than has been traditionally thought to be the case.

Staging the Spanish Golden Age

Staging the Spanish Golden Age
Author: Kathleen Jeffs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2018-04-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 019255140X

In this volume, Kathleen Jeffs draws on first-hand experience of the Royal Shakespeare Company's rehearsal room for the 2004-05 Spanish Golden Age season to put forth a collaborative model for translating, rehearsing, and performing Spanish Golden Age drama. Building on the RSC season, the volume offers methodologies for translation and communication that can feed the creative processes of actors and directors, while maintaining an ethos of fidelity with regards to the original texts. It argues that collaboration between academics and theatre practitioners was instrumental in the success of the season and that the work carried out has repercussions for critical debate of Comedia. The volume posits a model for future productions of the Comedia in English, one that recognizes the need for the languages of the scholar and the theatre artist to be made mutually intelligible by the use of collaborative strategies, mediated by a consultant or dramaturg proficient in both tongues. This model applies more generally to theatrical collaborations involving a translator, writer and director, and will be useful for translation and performance processes in any language.

The Golden Age Comedia

The Golden Age Comedia
Author: Charles Ganelin
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Total Pages: 438
Release: 1994
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9781557530868

Drawing on the groundbreaking Spanish scholarship and editions of earlier generations and relying on research conducted in Spanish archives, this pioneering group of English-speaking scholars offers a new treatment of familiar material. The editors yoke together widely varying critical practices, including incisive New Critical readings and far-reaching explorations that draw on the most current European critical thought. In addition to these more strictly literary studies, there are interdisciplinary essays focusing on seventeenth- and twentieth-century reception and the social makeup of the comedia audience. The whole thus presents a balanced picture of the many ways in which the comedia can be viewed, and the contributors complement each other's work in often surprising ways, illuminating the same corpus from a number of perspectives.

Space, Drama, and Empire

Space, Drama, and Empire
Author: Javier Lorenzo
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2023-09-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1684484936

Spanish poet, playwright, and novelist Félix Lope de Vega (1562–1635) was a key figure of Golden Age Spanish literature, second only in stature to Cervantes, and is considered the founder of Spain’s classical theater. In this rich and informative study, Javier Lorenzo investigates the symbolic use of space in Lope’s drama and its function as an ideological tool to promote an imagined Spanish national past. In specific plays, this book argues, historical landscapes and settings were used to foretell and legitimize the imperial present in Hapsburg Spain, allowing audiences to visualize and plot, as on a map, the country’s expansionist trajectory throughout the centuries. By focusing on connections among space, drama, and empire, this book makes an important contribution to the study of literature and imperialism in early modern Spain and equally to our understanding of the role and political significance of spatiality in Siglo de Oro comedia.

Divination on stage

Divination on stage
Author: Folke Gernert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2021-02-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 311073480X

Magicians, necromancers and astrologers are assiduous characters in the European golden age theatre. This book deals with dramatic characters who act as physiognomists or palm readers in the fictional world and analyses the fictionalisation of physiognomic lore as a practice of divination in early modern Romance theatre from Pietro Aretino and Giordano Bruno to Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca and Thomas Corneille.

Staging Doubt

Staging Doubt
Author: Leonie Pawlita
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 750
Release: 2019-09-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110660547

This volume considers the influential revival of ancient philosophical skepticism in the 16th and early 17th centuries and investigates, from a comparative perspective, its reception in early modern English, Spanish and French drama, dedicating detailed readings to plays by Shakespeare, Calderón, Lope de Vega, Rotrou, Desfontaines, and Cervantes. While all the plays employ similar dramatic devices for "putting skepticism on stage", the study explores how these dramas, however, give different "answers" to the challenges posed by skepticism in relation to their respective historico-cultural and "ideological" contexts.