The Duchess of Malfi and El mayordomo de la duquesa de Amalfi revisited: some differences in literary convention and cultural horizon

Luciano García García

doi:10.14198/raei.1999.12.04

Abstract

From the large bulk of national English and Spanish drama, those plays which happen to coincide in dealing with the same subject offer themselves as a privileged domain where a fruitful contrastive analysis can be carried out with a view to eliciting the divergent conventions and ideological values which rule in different and even opposing ways the production of literary works in seventeenth century England and Spain. To analyse and contrast some of those elements in The Duchess of Malfi and El mayordomo de la duquesa de Amalfi and put them in relation with their social, ideological and canonical context is the aim of this paper as a way of showing not only the literary practice in different societies, but how the notion of value in its Bakhtinian sense must be taken into account when assaying the appreciation of literary works stemming from divergent backgrounds.

Highlights

After finishing bis review of the studies on Anglo-Spanish relationships in seventeenth century drama, John Loftis, one of the most reliable modera scholars in this domain, states that the scarcity of proven instances of influences from the Spanish comedia upon English drama should stimulate the specialists to continué rather than to forsake the pursue of comparative studies, shifting from the search for sources to the most rewarding field of contrastive studies
It is difficult to say that The Duchess ofMalfi is a better play than El mayordomo, for, despite the degree of technical fulfilment of each play, dependent on particular conventions, our response is not to be entirely orientated by our horizon of expectations and our sympathetic or unsympathetic alignment with the peculiar view of the world proposed
It is high time to confront here the tragicomical view of both the English tragedy and, The Duchess ofMalfi, as it is more openly posited by Jacqueline Pearson (Chapters 1-4 and 6). While acknowledging that her general argument is acceptable in the sense that Elizabethan tragedy is not scrupulously the kind of tragedy represented by the classical Greek type, being, as it is, coloured by satirical and tragicomical elements, I think that she goes too far in overstressing the tragicomical character of Websterian plays and leaves aside the fact that the bloody farcical and tragicomical elements, such as just retribution of evil in the best tradition of the revenge play, do notpreclude a strong tragical view whether sceptical and detached or highly moral, as it is proved by the number of critics opting for one interpretation or another, which, in any case, attest to the complexity of the play

Summary

Introduction

After finishing bis review of the studies on Anglo-Spanish relationships in seventeenth century drama, John Loftis, one of the most reliable modera scholars in this domain, states that the scarcity of proven instances of influences from the Spanish comedia upon English drama should stimulate the specialists to continué rather than to forsake the pursue of comparative studies, shifting from the search for sources to the most rewarding field of contrastive studies.

Results

Conclusion