“No Word without Mystery”: Allegories of Sacred Truth in the Autos Sacramentales of Calderón de la Barca

Abstract

This essay closely examines several mythological autos sacramentales by the seventeenth-century Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca. These eucharistic dramas, allegorizations of famous tales from antiquity, raise provocative questions about the relation of myth to allegory and about the hermeneutical problems inherent in both. By explicitly thematizing the Word as source and guarantor of pagan myth and of language and illuminated interpretation themselves, the plays embody a powerful allegory of the assumed divine origin and sacral significance not only of myth but also of an essential and radical logocentrism. For Calderón divine ordination and revealed truth implicitly sacramentalize the auto and sanction the human author's hermeneutical and creative endeavors. This study shows that Calderón's metaphysics and allegorical theory constitute a timeless witness to Christian truth and a timely challenge to some widely accepted tenets of modern literary theory.