"The bringing of Spanish seventeenth-century verse plays to the contemporary English-speaking stage involves a number of fundamental questions. Are verse translations preferable to prose, and if so, what kind of verse? To what degree should translations aim to be 'faithful'? Which kinds of plays 'work', and which do not? Which values and customs of the past present no difficulties for contemporary audiences, and which need to be decoded in performance?Which kinds of staging are suitable, and which are not? To what degree, if any, should one aim for 'authenticity' in staging? In this volume, a group of translators, directors, and scholars explores these and related questions."--Jacket

Leading Golden Age theatre experts examine the ways that comedias have been adapted and reinvented, offering a broad performance history of the genre for scholars and practicioners alike. This volume brings together twenty-six essays from the world's leading scholars and practitioners of Spanish Golden Age theatre. Examining the startlingly wide variety of ways that Spanish comedias have been adapted, re-envisioned, and reinvented, the book makes the case that adaptation is a crucial lens for understanding the performance history of the genre. The essays cover a wide range of topics, from the early stage history of the comedia through numerous modern and contemporary case studies, as well as the transformation of the comedia into other dramatic genres, such as films, musicals, puppetry, and opera. The essays themselves are brief and accessible to non-specialists. This book will appeal not only to Golden Age scholars and students but also to theater practitioners, as well as to anyone interested in the theory and practice of adaptation. Harley Erdman is Professor of Theaterat the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Susan Paun de García is Professor of Spanish at Denison University. Contributors: Sergio Adillo Rufo, Karen Berman, Robert E. Bayliss, Laurence Boswell, Bruce R.Burningham, Amaya Curieses Irarte, Rick Davis, Harley Erdman, Susan L. Fischer, Charles Victor Ganelin, Francisco García Vicente, Alejandro González Puche, Valerie Hegstrom, Kathleen Jeffs, David Johnston, Gina Kaufmann, Catherine Larson, Donald R. Larson, Barbara Mujica, Susan Paun de García, Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez, Veronika Ryjik, Jonathan Thacker, Laura L. Vidler, Duncan Wheeler, Amy Williamsen, Jason Yancey

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Baroque Spanish stage is populated with virile queens and feminized kings. This study examines the diverse ways in which seventeenth-century comedias engage with the discourse of power and rulership and how it relates to gender. A privileged place for ideological negotiation, the comedia provided negative and positive reflections of kingship at a time when there was a perceived crisis of monarchical authority in the Habsburg court. Author María Cristina Quintero explores how playwrights such as Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, Antonio Coello, and Francisco Bances Candamo--taking inspiration from legend, myth, and history--repeatedly staged fantasies of feminine rule, at a time when there was a concerted effort to contain women's visibility and agency in the public sphere. The comedia's preoccupation with kingship together with its obsession with the representation of women (and women's bodies) renders the question of royal subjectivity inseparable from issues surrounding masculinity and femininity. Taking into account theories of performance and performativity within a historical context, this study investigates how the themes, imagery, and language in plays by Calderón and his contemporaries reveal a richly paradoxical presentation of gendered monarchical power.

Taking a literary journey through hell certainly sounds intriguing enough--and it is! If you can understand it! If you don't understand it, then you are not alone. If you have struggled in the past reading the ancient classic, then BookCaps can help you out. This book is a modern translation with a fresh spin. The original text is also presented in the book, along with a comparable version of the modern text. We all need refreshers every now and then. Whether you are a student trying to cram for that big final, or someone just trying to understand a book more, BookCaps can help. We are a small, but growing company, and are adding titles every month.

In this volume, Kathleen Jeffs draws on first-hand experience of the Royal Shakespeare Company's rehearsal room for the 2004-05 Spanish Golden Age season to put forth a collaborative model for translating, rehearsing, and performing Spanish Golden Age drama. Building on the RSC season, the volume offers methodologies for translation and communication that can feed the creative processes of actors and directors, while maintaining an ethos of fidelity with regards to the original texts. It argues that collaboration between academics and theatre practitioners was instrumental in the success of the season and that the work carried out has repercussions for critical debate of Comedia. The volume posits a model for future productions of the Comedia in English, one that recognizes the need for the languages of the scholar and the theatre artist to be made mutually intelligible by the use of collaborative strategies, mediated by a consultant or dramaturg proficient in both tongues. This model applies more generally to theatrical collaborations involving a translator, writer and director, and will be useful for translation and performance processes in any language.