One of the most intellectually and emotionally engaging of the Spanish Golden Age (seventeenth century) plays, as well as the most controversial. Taking place during the reign of King Pedro of Castile (13501369), it is one of the spectacular 'honour dramas', in which the main characters confront compelling yet conflicting imperatives. The Physician of His Honour is beautiful in its poetry and unsettling in its resolution. For more than 350 years the play and its author have been as fiercely reviled as they have been enthusiastically acclaimed by audiences and readers. First published in 1997, for the second edition the translation has been extensively revised, with the aim of simplifying the English, whilst continuing to respect and acknowledge as much as possible the beauties and challenges of the original Spanish.

The Spanish wife-murder comedias constitute an important category of seventeenth-century peninsular plays. Fatal Union considers thirty-one comedias by fifteen authors to show that they present anything but a unified perspective.

This book presents the first sustained analysis of the reception of the Aristotelian golden mean and related ideas of moderation in the literature and thought of early modern Spain (1500-1700). It explores the Golden-Age understanding of Aristotle's doctrine as a prolegomenon to literary study, and its allegorical reformulation in the myths of Icarus and Phaethon, before arguing that scrutiny of how the mean and the related concept of ethical moderation aretreated by early modern authors represents a vital but underexploited tool for literary analysis. Particular attention is paid to detailed case studies of works by three canonical authors--Garcilaso,Calderón, Gracián--demonstrating the value of the mean as a locus of critical attention, as analysis of its presentation allows several long-standing disputes in the scholarship on these authors to be newly resolved.

This volume presents a new approach to Spanish Baroque drama, inspired by Foucauldian discourse archeology, whose rare fusion of meticulous philology and ambitious theory will be exciting and fruitful both for specialists of Spanish literature and for anyone invested in the history of European thought. Detailed readings are dedicated to some of the most prominent plays by Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca, both autos sacramentales (El viaje del alma; El divino Orfeo; La lepra de Constantino) and comedias (El castigo sin venganza; El príncipe constante; El médico de su honra). The "archeological" perspective cast on the plays implies an integration of their discourse-historical "foils", from pagan antiquity through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as well as a discussion of related discourses, mainly theological, philosophical and historiographical. A separate "excursus" suggests a reconsideration of the common manner in which the discursive relation between the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Mannerism and the Baroque is conceptualized.

An anthology of plays from the Spanish Golden Age contains the full text of 15 plays; an introduction to each play with information about the author, the work, performance issues and current criticism; and glossaries with definitions of difficult words and concepts.