Tragic Resonance: Listening for Women’s Voices in the Myth of Echo and Narcissus

Abstract

As shaped by Ovid’s beautifully sensual poetic conception in the Metamorphoses, the conjoined fable of Echo and Narcissus has captivated the imagination of hearers, readers, and viewers across centuries and cultures. My attraction to the fable began with the study of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s court spectacle play Eco y Narciso (1661) and the attention Calderón devoted to developing therein the figures of Echo and Narcissus’s mother Liriope. That development was prefigured by the first Spanish theatrical version of the myth, the Trajedia de Narciso written by Francisco de la Cueva y Silva (ca. 1580). The voice and vision of Echo would then be dramatically refigured by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in her auto sacramental, El divino Narciso (ca. 1689). In this article, I examine the three dramas comparatively, seeking to relate the divergent potentialities brought out by the three dramatic poets to the different media and cultural contexts in which they worked.