Prologue

Abstract

Prologue Elizabeth R. Wright Plot twists delight and challenge us as readers, teachers, and scholars of Golden Age theater. But the year of this issue, 2021, united us with a series of unexpected, previously unimaginable turns of events, some welcome, many decidedly not. Though readers who open this issue or download it in the spring of 2022 will need no reminders, this prefatory space serves, in part, as an explanatory gloss for scholars and students in the decades ahead. So, it bears mention that as we began the editorial work for this issue in early 2021, people all over the world marveled at the seemingly miraculous scientific plot twist of safe and effective vaccinations for COVID-19, produced in a matter of months rather than years. With all the gratitude and admiration due to the scientists and public health officials who made this possible, we would urge readers—whether today or in the decades to come—to save large measures of appreciation for fellow travelers in the humanities and arts whose feats of ingenuity and resilience nourish our imaginations, souls, and scholarly communities. The articles, book reviews, and interview within this issue are powerful testaments to the unceasing labors of love that have kept humanities research going at a time when this mode of exchange has been so crucial, given that conferences and other gatherings in person continued to be postponed, canceled, or shifted online. In addition to our regular features, this issue includes the second installment of our Touchstones section, which celebrates and recontextualizes scholarship from past generations. Stefano Arata's "Candor y tragedia: Federico García Lorca y la poética de La Barraca" was the last major research completed before his untimely death in July of 2001. To honor Arata on the twentieth anniversary of his passing and, most importantly, to continue the scholarly conversations he proposes in "Candor y tragedia," we offer a reedition, with some updates to the bibliography and to the accompanying illustrations. In so doing, the seminal essay will now be available through the major online portals and printed copies of this issue. To provide new perspectives on Stefano Arata's scholarship, Fausta Antonucci looks back on the scholarly practices and sociability that shaped the generation of Italian Hispanists to which both belong. We are also mindful that if scholarship from the past is to live on in the future, it must also be generative. With this idea in mind, José Manuel Pedrosa takes stock of Arata's methodology as a point of departure for his own wide-ranging exploration of the literary tradition and latter day echoes of the versos [End Page 5] encadenados that shape the anonymous entremés Los habladores. In so doing, this homage and response to Arata's "Candor y tragedia" invites us to think in new ways about how Golden Age theater connects to global literary traditions, past and present. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Cover of vol. 73, no. 1, Retrato de Federico García Lorca con un kimono amarillo y al fondo la carta marina "Mare Oceanum" con parte de la Península Ibérica, las Islas Canarias y la Atlántida, by Gregorio Toledo, 1931. ©Huerta de San Vicente, Casa-Museo Federico García Lorca / Ayuntamiento de Granada. Photograph furnished by Art Resource, NY. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 2. Stephano Arata, April of 1990. Photograph by Franco Arata, furnished by Laura Arata. In closing, we must remark one particularly unwelcome turn of events from 2021. Don W. Cruickshank died suddenly. We are grateful to Germán Vega for taking on the Herculean and paradoxical task of rendering a concise portrait of Cruickshank's boundless erudition and generosity to colleagues. Our condolences go out to the many colleagues and friends he leaves behind. [End Page 6] Copyright © 2021 Bulletin of the Comediantes