Studies in Honor of Ruth Lee Kennedy (review)

Abstract

Spanish society from what is, after all, a near universal sexual fantasy, common alike to men and women. The book is attractively printed with a minimum of typographical errors. The absence of indices or bibliographies in this series is compensated in this instance by extensive footnote documentation. In sum, the author has provided us with a reliable study which will serve as a point of departure for the further exploration of the «invisible mistress» theme in Golden Age literature. Ruth Lundelius University of Georgia WILLIAMSEN, VERN G., & A. F. MICHAEL ATLEE, eds. Studies in Honor of Ruth Lee Kennedy. Chapel Hill: Estudios de Hispanófila, 1977. Paper. 176 pp. Six of the studies honoring Professor Kennedy treat aspects of Golden Age drama. In «'Acrostics' in Calderón, » Hannah E. Bergman discusses the use of variations of acrostic formulas in several of Calderón's plays: the comedy El secreto a voces (in which the device provides a means for the protagonists to communicate without compromising their honor), the religious play La aurora en Copacabana (in which the allegorical figure Idolatría speaks in acrostic terms which serve to reflect the awe of the Incas at the arrival ofthe Spaniards), and the zarzuelaElgolfo de las sirenas (in which the Sirens create new messages from Ulises' speeches). Professor Bergman relates Calderón's attempt to integrate the device into the plot structure of Elsecreto a voces to Tirso's emphasis on technical ingenuity in Amarpor arte mayor, makes a correspondence between the «echo effect» in La aurora and that ofEco ? Narciso, and analyzes the development of Calderón's technique in the three «acrostic» plays. Donald T. Dietz, in «Toward Understanding Calderón's Evolution as an Auto Dramatist: A Study in Dramatic Structure,» examines the early versions and refundiciones of the autos El divino Orfeo and La vida es sueño. The comparative analysis allows the critic to note Calderón's development as a dramatist: the later works are formally and conceptually balanced, the allegory is more complex, and problematic elements of the early works have been corrected or eliminated. F. William Forbes' essay, «'Catalinón, el que no ve': Regarding w. 880-5 of Tirso's Burlador de Sevilla, » deals with the significance of the name Catalinón and the controversy surrounding its interpretation. Using as a point of departure Fred Abrams' elaboration of the reversal of the Italian non li cata, «the unheeded one» [Hispania, 50 (1967), 472-77], Forbes' reading presents the servant as a good man and a good Christian who senses and expresses the errors of his master, and who consequently heightens the thematic value of the play. Forbes renders w. 880-85: «Although I ám Catalinón/ [one not supposed to see]/ I am, sir, a good man;/ for it has not been said of me/ 'Catalinón is the man...,'/ for you know this name/ saddles me backwards;/ [I do see, and can understand]» (p. 69), and calls attention 134 to the numerous allusions to sight in subsequent verses. A detail: it does not seem clear why Forbes associates the term mirón with bobo (pp. 67-68), since he has shown that this particular onlooker is hardly a simpleton. In «The Versification of Antonio Mira de Amescua's Comedias and of Some Comedias Attributed to Him,» Vern G. Williamsen, following the example of Morley and Bruerton and other critics who have based chronology on a study of verse forms, provides a chronology of the plays of Mira de Amescua (including those of doubtful attribution) and a list of sources and dates of the texts. Nellie E. Sánchez Arce, in «Un éxito dramático de Mira de Amescua: el auto al Nacimiento, Pastores de Belén, » offers a summary of one of Mira's autos, whose text is preserved in two seventeenth-century manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid. She cites, among other elements, the use of polymetric verse and the profound religious sense of the work. Margaret Wilson, in «Tirso's El melancólico and Esto si que es negociar, » supports Ruth Lee Kennedy's thesis that Esto sí antedates El melancólico (contrary to the ordering by J. E. Hartzenbusch, E...