La creación del mundo by Luis Vélez de Guevara

Abstract

MLR, .,   de príncipes texts, from the classical notions of imitatio, enarratio, and compilatio, to the Genettian ideas of the hypotext and hypertext, and Zumthor’s mouvance, which Gutiérrez Trápaga adopts to frame the highly deliberate and multifaceted rewritings which each of the works subsequently discussed will perform. Aer concluding Chapter  with a solid examination of Garcí Rodríguez de Montalvo’s foundational Amadís de Gaula (c. ), and the same author’s continuation in the Sergas de Esplandián (before ), Gutiérrez Trápaga provides in the second chapter an illuminating account of the two branches of the cycle that Montalvo had consciously inaugurated. e two writers who constitute the ‘heterodox’ current of the Amadís sequels, Ruy Páez de Ribera () and Juan Díaz (), strove to introduce greater verisimilitude into Montalvo’s cycle and to promote a more explicitly Christian didacticism, but, in commercial terms, they foundered, whereas the more successful, ‘orthodox’ continuations by Feliciano de Silva heightened the adventures of Amadís’s successors and enhanced the entertainment function of the original works. If the books of the Amadís cycle were among the strongest examples of the genre in the first half of the sixteenth century, the three printed works of the Espejo de príncipes y caballeros tradition, by Diego Ortúñez de Calahorra (), Pedro de la Sierra Infanzón (), and Marcos Martínez (), occupy a similar status in the latter part of the century, with the last of these in fact remaining in print until , and it is to these that Gutiérrez Trápaga turns in his final chapter. As in the previous sections of the monograph, the author is able to range across these lengthy romances without stretching his analysis too thinly, and, as well as establishing how these works relate to each other and their genre, he brings out those qualities which, for all the brickbats that were hurled at the libros de caballerías by authorities as illustrious as Joan Lluís Vives, made this type of book evidently so attractive to the reading public. U  E J D B La creación del mundo. By L V  G. Ed. by W R. M and C. G P. Intro. by J T. (Ediciones críticas, ) Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta. .  pp. $.. ISBN ––– –. e list of works by Luis Vélez de Guevara edited by William R. Manson and C. George Peale continues to grow in size and scope. La creación del mundo, a comedia ‘a lo divino’, first made available in print in , now reappears in a new critical edition with an in-depth Introduction by Jonathan acker. is edition brings the play to a deservedly wider readership and, presented with its production history, may engender future performances. acker makes the case that this Old Testament play could plausibly have been conceived for the Corpus Christi celebrations in  in Badajoz, where a range of commissions transcended generic expectations for the auto sacramental. Comparing Vélez’s play to Lope de Vega’s similarly themed La creación del mundo y primera culpa de hombre, acker carefully disregards the possibility of mutual influence (p. ). Peale and acker debate  Reviews the possibility that Vélez’s La creación del mundo was the basis for a comedia de repente (partially improvised play) in the court of Felipe IV c. . As opposed to a mere dramatization of Genesis, Vélez brings his creative nous and experience as a theatre-maker to embody the visual and verbal features of the narrative. In the trove of elucidations featured in the endnotes, Peale is able to draw on his cumulative experience of working with so many of Vélez’s dramatic works. Readers are fortunate that Juan de la Cuesta has continued to publish these editions, with three others having already appeared in the same year. As the title suggests, La creación del mundo commences as Dios Padre relates the creation of the world in conversation with Adán. Geared up for the war to capture the human soul, ‘[l]os más demonios que pudieren salir’ (p. ) fight with comediaworthy motivation (and arrayed with detailed costuming described...