A panoramic, state-of-the-art handbook destined to chart a course for future work in the field of early modern Hispanic theater studies. It begins in the closet with an essay on Celestina as closet drama and moves out into the court to explore intersections with courtly love. An essay on the comedia and the classics demonstrates this genre’s firm grounding in the classical tradition, despite Lope de Vega’s famous protestations to the contrary. Distinct but related genres such as the autos sacramentales and the entremeses also make an appearance. The traditional themes of honor and wife-murder share the stage with less familiar topics like the incorporation of animals into performance. This volume covers the urban space of the city in Spain and Portugal as well as uncharted territories in the New World and Japan. Essays on emblems and the picaresque round out this anthology, along with studies of theatrical representations of early modern innovations in science and technology. The book concludes with two different psychoanalytical approaches, focused on melancholy and Lacanian tragedy, respectively. This collection incorporates the work of younger scholars along with established names in the field to synthesize the most exciting recent work on the comedia and related forms of early modern Hispanic theatrical production.
Contributors include: Ignacio Arellano, Frederick de Armas, Henry Sullivan, Edward Friedman, A. Robert Lauer, Manuel Delgado, Adrienne Martín, Enrique García Santo Tomás, Matthew Stroud, Teresa Scott Soufas, Enrique Fernández, María Mercedes Carrión, Robert Bayliss, Ted Bergman, Cory Reed, Maryrica Lottman, Christina Lee, and Enrique Duarte.
Hilaire Kallendorf, Ph.D. (2000) in Comparative Literature, Princeton University, is Professor of Hispanic and Religious Studies at Texas A&M University. Her books include Exorcism and Its Texts, Conscience on Stage, Sins of the Fathers, and A New Companion to Hispanic Mysticism (Brill, 2010).
List of Contributors
List of Figures
Introduction
PART ONE — ORIGINS
Celestina as Closet Drama
Enrique Fernandez Rivera
Courtly Love and the Comedia
Robert Bayliss
The Comedia and the Classics
Frederick A. de Armas
Spanish Sacramental Plays: A Study of Their Evolution
J. Enrique Duarte
PART TWO — THEMES
Honor/Honra Revisited
A. Robert Lauer
The Wife-Murder Plays
Matthew D. Stroud
’Til Play Do Us Part: Marriage, Law, and the Comedia
Maria M. Carrion
Onstage/Backstage: Animals in the Golden Age Comedia
Adrienne L. Martin
Entremeses and Other Forms of Teatro Breve
Ted L. L. Bergman
PART THREE — PLACES
On Speed and Restlessness: Calderon’s Urban Kaleidoscope
Enrique Garcia Santo-Tomas
The New World in Lope de Vega’s Columbus and St. Christopher: El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristobal Colon
Maryrica Ortiz Lottman
The Quest for Spiritual Transcendence in the Theater of Gil Vicente
Manuel Delgado Morales
Lope de Vega and The Martyrs of Japan
Christina H. Lee
PART FOUR — INTERSECTIONS
Picaresque Sensibility and the Comedia
Edward H. Friedman
Emblems at the Golden Age Theater
Ignacio Arellano
Science, Instrumentality, and Chaotics in Early Modern Spanish Drama
Cory A. Reed
Melancholy, the Comedia, and Early Modern Psychology
Teresa Scott Soufas
Jacques Lacan and Tragic Drama in the Golden Age of Spain
Henry W. Sullivan
Chapter Summaries
Select Bibliography
Index
Scholars and students of early modern Spain and the Hispanic world, theater and performance studies, cultural studies, and religion. Of particular interest to researchers studying the comedia, closet drama, tragedy, the entremés, and the auto sacramental.