Spanish Drama Research Articles

Тирсо де Молина: маньеризм на пороге барокко

Continuing the study into the creative work of the Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina, in this article the author focuses on the problems of the writer’s works on the borderline between Mannerism and the Baroque that pose the most important questions of human existence, relations with the world and with God. In a broad historical, cultural, philosophical and religious context, the article analyses autos and ‘dramas about saints’, as well as the two masterpieces by Tirso de Molina — The Man Condemned for Lack of Faith and The Trickster of Seville, or the Stone Guest. In the drama The Man Condemned for Lack of Faith, the traditional image of a Christian righteous is debunked and the exaltation of a sinner is justified. In The Trickster of Seville, or the Stone Guest, criticism of morals is closely intertwined with mythopoetic imagery, and the tragic — with the grotesque, marking the tragicomic decline of the Renaissance and the transition from Mannerism to the problems of the Baroque. The optimistic anthropocentrism of the Renaissance is shifting towards the dynamics and tragedy of being and the heightened emotionality and polarity of the image system.

Mediated Translation between Italian and Russian Languages

La forza del destino was commissioned to Giuseppe Verdi by the St Petersburg Imperial Theatres in 1861, and premiered in November 1862, at the Bolshoy Kamenny Theatre. The opera was written on a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, and draws its subject from the Spanish drama Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino, by Ángel de Saavedra, through an Italian version by Faustino Sanseverino, and with insertions of fragments from Schiller’s trilogy Wallengstein. In this paper I analyse the genesis of the opera, considering the typical derivation of Italian operatic librettos from pre-existing literary works, a process that combines mediated and inter-semiotic translation. This allows me to show the artistic resources offered by mediated translation in the field of stage literature. On another level of discussion, given that for the Premiere Apollon Grigor’yev translated the libretto from Italian to Russian, I consider the role of translation on the reception of this subject by the local audience.

Intertextuality of selected Arabic and Western literary works

This paper conducts a comparative analysis of the literary-cultural impact of Arabic literature on Western literature. This research focuses on three literary comparisons taken from works that belong to Arabic and Western literature by means of a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the target textual data. The study chooses to address the following items: the Spanish play by Lope de Vega (1562-1635), La Doncella Teodor which has a similar Arabic version among the Arab tales of the Arabian Nights, the literary influence of the story of Zarqa al-Yamamah on Shakespeare’s play Macbeth and the literary mirroring of the Arabic story of Solomon and the Angel of Death onto Marquez’s novel Flee to Samarra by unveiling the aspects of the literary impact of each Arabic literary item. The study illustrates elements of intertextuality and functionality that close the gap between text and culture on each spectrum as well as between the Occident and the Orient by looking at the degree of similarity between these stories. This study contributes to offering insights into the literary intertextuality between Arabic literature and Western literature (Spanish and English) while also sheds light on the cross-cultural perceptions between the two forms of literature by examining the textual, cultural and psychological aspects of each extract compared with each other.

Gender relations in Spanish theatre during the Silver Age: a quantitative comparison of works in the Spanish Drama Corpus

Abstract One of the many changes witnessed by Spanish society at the beginning of the 20th century was the early reshaping of the role of women, including in the realm of theatre. During the first three decades of the new century, Spanish theatre was thriving, favouring the emergence of new gender roles: there were new female playwrights, professional actresses, stage designers, costume designers, theatre company directors, etc. Against this background, i.e. the awakening of female consciousness, it is worth exploring whether the growing position of women in public life goes hand in hand with a greater presence of female characters in the plays composed at that time. With a view to assessing the position of women in playwriting in the Silver Age of Spanish literature, twenty-five stage plays by nine playwrights written between 1878 and 1936 have been analysed, taken from the Spanish Drama Corpus, which forms part of the DraCor project. The distribution of male and female protagonists on stage and the influence of female presence in dramatic conflict have been traced based on quantitative textual factors. The study thus tests the potential of quantitative methods and their scope for the structural analysis of plays and studies on dramatic corpora from a gender perspective.

The Deceived: Lope de Rueda and Improvisation on the Sixteenth-Century Spanish Stage

ABSTRACT Lope de Rueda’s plays, among them Los engañados (The Deceived, 1558?), met great acclaim among contemporaneous audiences. Yet unlike the continued literary prestige enjoyed by the play’s Italian source, Gl’ingannati (The Deceived, 1532), Rueda’s work has been reduced to a sidenote in literary history. Such a decline in the author-actor’s critical fate speaks to the importance of physical performance to his popularity: performance that, this article argues, did not rely on memorized written dialogue. Through a comparison of Los engañados and Gl’ingannati, this article hopes to demonstrate that—plot aside—the Spanish play bears closer resemblance to the improvised Italian plays of the commedia dell’arte than it does to the scripted Gl’ingannati. An analysis of the work’s structure in the light of studies on commedia dell’arte scenarios, and the elements of orality found in its dialogue that imply spontaneous composition, shows Rueda’s play to carry all of the hallmarks of improvisation. As such, this article suggests that improvisation must be recognized as a production mode of early modern theatre well beyond the borders of the Italian peninsula.

Ensuring Good Enough is Actually Good Enough: Utilizing Metadata Maker to Enhance Discovery and Access of a Hidden Collection of Spanish Plays

A collection of approximately 12,000 late eighteenth- to mid-twentieth-century Spanish plays were purchased by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library in the 1960s and bound into 669 volumes. These items have been technically accessible and browsable but practically undiscoverable. A project was undertaken to improve access and discoverability of this hidden collection. The volumes were disbound, stabilized, cataloged, digitized, and placed in storage with ideal preservation conditions. Metadata Maker, an open source cataloging tool, was a critical resource in making the project feasible and ensuring good enough records were actually good enough.

Ages, Stories, Styles

The contents of the next collection of the Institute of Art Studies from the series Problems of Ibero-American Art involuntarily invokes a premonition of a fascinating journey through different eras and subjects of Spanish culture: theatre, music, fine arts, social philosophy, literature of the Golden Age... The collection opens with an article by Vidas Sulinas, an expert on classical Spanish theatre. The author examines the time period from the last third of the 16th century to the beginning of the 18th century, tracing the change of three artistic styles — Renaissance, Mannerism and Baroque — using the example of the work of three classics of Spanish drama. To introduce readers to these works, the author gives brief reviews of the plots: at the heart of them is love, its mysteries, virtues and trials. The article raises a number of eternal problems of existence, including good and evil, reality and imagination and, finally, the eternally relevant motif of the artist and power. The second article written by Irina Kryazheva is devoted to the study of court musicians of Medieval Spain. The task is by no means simple, given the small number of sources. Their identification and subsequent scrupulous study are one of the undoubted advantages of the text. In the next article on percussion instruments of the Renaissance Spain, Maria Moiseeva recreates the widest palette of musical instruments of the era with their description and classification. Particular attention is paid to fruitful interaction between the European and Arab worlds. Denis Fedosov creates a voluminous canvas of church life in Catholic Spain through describing retablo as the center of artistic composition of a Spanish temple. These and other articles written by specialists make allowance for amateurs and welcome new readers. Overall, the collection turned out to be successful. First of all, due to the selection of authors. It is written professionally, which means it will be of interest to professionals, and for the same reason, along with the variety of content, it is also interesting for a wider audience.

Early modern gender again

This article focuses on the contemporary Spanish playwrights María Folguera (b. 1984) and Nando López (b. 1977), attending to their adaptations of early modern writers as a mode of commenting on and critiquing contemporary gender norms. The close reading of four theatrical productions is situated within the recent history of global feminist social movements, including #MeToo, #TimesUp, #YoSíTeCreo, #NiUnaMenos and other public debates combating misogyny, gender inequality, and gender-based violence. With attention paid to the history of gender and gender-based violence in early modern Spanish theatre, the essay creates space to consider why and how the resurgence of these texts and topics appeal to contemporary audiences. It also explores complications and context for each of these productions, and speculates on the future of early modern gender for contemporary theatre.

Esther Fernández. To Embody the Marvelous: The Making of Illusions in Early Modern Spain

Esther Fernández. <i>To Embody the Marvelous: The Making of Illusions in Early Modern Spain</i>

Stages of Hope

Stages of Hope

The Possibilities of Gender Representation in Enlightenment Spain: The Case of Leandro Fernández de Moratín’s El viejo y la niña (1790)

This article reconsiders the legacy of Leandro Fernández de Moratín’s first play, El viejo y la niña (1790), particularly in comparison with his much more famous last play, El sí de las niñas (1806). Analyzing three aspects of El viejo, I argue that this play is more willing to question and undermine prevailing notions of gender and authority in Enlightenment Spain. First, the surprise ending allows the play’s heroine to defend her autonomy and determine her own future while offering the option of marital separation in cases of irreconcilable differences. Second, the play depicts a rare instance in neoclassical Spanish drama of solidarity and friendship between women. Doña Beatriz counsels and defends her young sister-in-law. Finally, the play breaks with all of Moratín’s later work because only in El viejo does an older widow represent a voice of Enlightenment reason. The independently wealthy widow Doña Beatriz serves as a principal voice of Enlightenment reason in contrast with all of Moratín’s later plays—particularly El sí de las niñas—in which male characters embody reason while older, illogical widows are the object of ridicule. The differences in how these plays address the topic of women’s place in society contributes to our understanding of the gender anxiety that so preoccupied the enlightened reformers of eighteenth-century Spain.

Fariña/Cocaine Coast (2018) and Patria/Homeland (2020): (Re)negotiating the Transition in the age of streaming and crisis

The indignados movement has suggested that the roots of Spain’s political and economic bankruptcy are to be found in the ‘Regime of 78’, allowing Francoist ills to continue after the Transition to Spain’s parliamentary democracy. This article critically accesses how and why two recent television series – Fariña/Cocaine Coast (2018) and Patria/Homeland (2020) – depict drugs and terrorism, major blights to everyday lives in Galicia and the Basque Country, respectively, during the post-Franco period. The article asks how these twenty-first-century screen narratives rewrite canonical accounts of the Transition during a time of crisis in which the success of local television drama has provided a rare light of optimism – Fariña was bought by Netflix and Patria is the first Spanish drama to be produced by HBO Europe.

Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature by Erin Alice Cowling

Reviewed by: Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature by Erin Alice Cowling MaryAnne Vetterling Cowling, Erin Alice. Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature. U of Toronto P, 2021. Pp. 214. ISBN 978-1-4875-2720-4. Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature provides an excellent overview of the complex early history of chocolate and its significance within the context of Pre-Columbian culture and Early Modern Spanish literature. It is about chocolate in its earliest form, as a drink made from cacao beans. In addition to its six chapters with their respective [End Page 619] introduction and conclusion, the book contains endnotes, an index, a bibliography with useful links, plus two appendices and an epilogue about a recent Spanish play (Mestiza by Julieta Soria) in which cacao beans have a significant role. The typographical errors are few although in Appendix 2, p.171 the word toras should be otras as in the original document (available online). This affects the English translation which is penalty of Mosaic Law and should rather be “other punishments.” Professor Cowling begins her book with a chapter about the history of chocolate in Pre-Columbian times and cites evidence of the important role it played before the arrival of the Conquistadores. She notes the discovery of ceramic vessels containing cacao residue from 600 B.C. and recounts references to chocolate in various extant codices to establish the importance of cacao in Pre-Columbian cultures as a ceremonial and medicinal substance. Chapter two unfolds a selection of texts written by the earliest Spaniards to encounter the New World whose accounts of chocolate consist of reports on the various ways it was used. We find out that for many of the indigenous peoples, cacao beans were an important unit of currency exchange and were also used as gifts. In addition, there are accounts of how chocolate was processed and of its properties, both medicinal and harmful. Cowling details a possible reference to chocolate in Columbus’s writings and mentions Cortés’s sampling of the drink. She also includes selections from historical documents by Díaz del Castillo, Sahagún, Acosta, and others. In the next chapter we are introduced to a number of passages from seventeenth-century Spanish literature wherein chocolate as a drink appears mainly in comedias and entremeses by authors such as Calderón, Tirso de Molina, and Salas Barbadillo, thereby showing how chocolate evolved from a drink of the rich and the socially ambitious at the start of the seventeenth century to a common commodity by its end. Cowling also deals with the economic aspect of cacao in the Old-World market as a precious commodity. Chapter four focuses on the play Santa Rosa del Perú by the Spaniards Moreto and Lanini y Sagredo, written in honor of the beatification of Saint Rose of Lima. Cowling first examines the ecclesiastical debates about the permissibility of drinking chocolate while fasting. She then offers a detailed analysis of the play and comments on Rosa’s use of chocolate to cure her illnesses, both physical and spiritual, as well as her servant’s persistent hunger and desire for the beverage. This chapter is enhanced by two illustrations, a still life by Pereda containing the instruments typically used for preparing chocolate drinks in Spain and a photo of a sixteenth-century statue in Mexico City dedicated to the “Christ of the Cacao Bean.” The following chapter presents information about controversies in historical and medical documents concerning chocolate as either a medicine or a poison. Documents by Cortijo Herraiz, Valverde Turices, Colmenero de Ledesma, and others are quoted to illustrate medical opinions about chocolate and its consumption in Spain. A passage from a French travel diary (1677) about being served chocolate at the home of a Spanish princess is included in addition to a segment from Mata’s 1747 cookbook. Woven into the chapter are also various selections from literature, the most interesting being a “Décima” published in 1729 by Cortijo Herraiz about the virtues of chocolate. Excerpts from fictional writings by Marradón, Quiñones de Benavente, and Santos, among others, demonstrate, according to Cowling, a clear trajectory...

띠르소의 『따마르의 복수』와 비극의 문제

Tirso de Molina''s La venganza de Tamar, a 17th-century Spanish playwright, is based on the episodes of Amnon and Tamar in the Old Testament. And this play is a representative work that Tirso himself named a tragedy. Therefore, in this study, we will focus on whether this play can be classified as a tragedy. To this end, applying the concept of Aristotle''s tragedy, the only view of tragedy at that time, to this play does not show a tragic appearance at all in the main character''s tendency, absolute fate, and the main character''s resistance to it, and Hamartia''s perspective. Therefore, so far, it can be said that it is appropriate to interpret Tirso''s drama only with the existing two methodologies of comic vision and Christian teaching.

Un colega generoso, un investigador sin par: Don William Cruickshank (1942–2021)

This article assesses the career and publications of Don W. Cruickshank, an internationally respected scholar memorable for his researches on Calderón and seventeenth-century Spanish drama and for his groundbreaking work on printing in seventeenth-century Spain. Besides numerous editions and studies of plays by Calderón, in 1973 Cruickshank edited and published, with J. E. Varey, The ‘Comedias’ of Calderón. A Facsimile Edition with Textual and Critical Studies in 19 volumes. His writings culminated in a searching biography on Don Pedro Calderón, which first came out in English (Cambridge U. P., 2009), but was soon translated and published in Spain (Madrid: Gredos, 2011). Don Cruickshank’s books, editions and articles on Spain’s Golden Age of culture and theatre leave an enduring legacy, and will enlighten and inspire Hispanists for many years to come.

Health and Healing in the Early Modern Iberian World: A Gendered Perspective

Health and Healing in the Early Modern Iberian World: A Gendered Perspective

Exil, immigration, de l’oubli à la mémoire

La réflexion autour de la mémoire et de l’oubli est au cœur de la problématique migratoire. Dans cette étude nous analysons les pièces de Juana Escabias et de Némer Salamún, deux dramaturges très engagés face au drame des migrants. Ce travail propose d’interroger les modalités d’émergence des mémoires (individuelles, familiales et collectives) comme source d’une construction en même temps que d’une déconstruction identitaire, parfois traumatique. La forme théâtrale prend alors une forme hybride afin de mieux rendre compte de l’éclatement identitaire dont font l’objet les personnages.

Social Justice in Spanish Golden Age Theatre

Social Justice in Spanish Golden Age Theatre

스페인어 수사 질문 유형화를 위한 탐색 연구

The current study aims to review the existing literature on rhetorical questions and to present effective ways to classify the subtypes of the rhetorical questions based on quasi-natural Spanish data such as TV drama. A rhetorical question can be considered a type of non-standard questions, because it takes the form of a question but has a similar or even stronger force than a statement and is not usually expected to answer. The reason for not expecting an answer is that the speaker is assumed to already know the answer, and the listener is believed to easily know the answer through inference. After a close review of previous studies on rhetorical questions, a checklist based on the lexico-syntactic, semantic, conversational, and discourse characteristics of rhetorical questions has been made. Toward the end, a couple of sample rhetorical questions extracted from actual Spanish dramas have been analyzed. This paper is expected to guide the firm ground for future empirical research on rhetorical questions in Spanish.

A Neuroscientific and Cognitive Literary Approach to the Treatment of Time in Calderón's Autos sacramentales.

Time processing is a fundamental subject in cognitive sciences and neuroscience. Current research is deepening how our brains process time, revealing its essential role in human functionality and survival. In his autos sacramentales, Early Modern Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca portrays the relationships between human inner workings and the Christian concept of time. These plays portray the experience of the present, the perception of the flow of time, the measure of time raging from seconds to eternity, and the mental travel necessary to inhabit the past and future with the help of memory and imagination. Calderón explores how the dramatic form can portray all these temporal phenomena and how that portrait of time can constrain the dramatic structure. The different parts of the brain in charge of executive decisions, projections, memories, computation, and calibration are the basis that leads these characters to make the choices that will take them to the future they have cast for themselves. This paper analyzes how the processes that Calderón ascribed to the soul of his characters in the 17th century relate to ongoing cognitive and neuroscientific findings.