An assessment of the life, work and reputation of Spain's leading Golden Age dramatist

The first comprehensive study of Calderón in EnglishPedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) is one of the most important dramatists - many would say the single most important dramatist - of the Spanish Golden Age. Spain''s dominant and most prestigious playwright for much of the seventeenth century, his work is still regularly staged and translated, influential in more recent times on writers as diverse as Schiller, Shelley and Lorca. The author of around 120 plays (not counting his numerous Corpus Christi autos) in a variety of styles, Calderón is most famous for his stirring dramas, characterized by rhetorically powerful poetry, dramatic structures carefully calibrated to produce poignant echoes, and the fizzing intellectual energy they apply to the age''s ontological, eschatological and political preoccupations. His plays succeed in combining these perennial concerns with compelling plots subtle enough to defy definitive interpretation. As this volume seeks to show, however, Calderón''s comedies deserve equal recognition. Too long stereotyped as a dour, cerebral conservative, this playwright''s comic works are as amusing as they are clever. This Companion is the first comprehensive study of Calderón in English. It provides a rigorous but readable introduction to the man, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.ual recognition. Too long stereotyped as a dour, cerebral conservative, this playwright''s comic works are as amusing as they are clever. This Companion is the first comprehensive study of Calderón in English. It provides a rigorous but readable introduction to the man, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.ual recognition. Too long stereotyped as a dour, cerebral conservative, this playwright''s comic works are as amusing as they are clever. This Companion is the first comprehensive study of Calderón in English. It provides a rigorous but readable introduction to the man, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.ual recognition. Too long stereotyped as a dour, cerebral conservative, this playwright''s comic works are as amusing as they are clever. This Companion is the first comprehensive study of Calderón in English. It provides a rigorous but readable introduction to the man, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.an, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.

A Companion to the Spanish Renaissance makes a renewed case for the inclusion of Spain within broader European Renaissance movements. Its introduction, “A Renaissance for the ‘Spanish Renaissance’?” will be sure to incite polemic across a broad spectrum of academic fields. This interdisciplinary volume combines micro- with macro-history to offer a snapshot of the best new work being done in this area. With essays on politics and government, family and daily life, religion, nobles and court culture, birth and death, intellectual currents, ethnic groups, the plastic arts, literature, popular culture, law courts, women, literacy, libraries, civic ritual, illness, money, notions of community, philosophy and law, science, colonial empire, and historiography, it offers breath-taking scope without sacrificing attention to detail. Destined to become the standard go-to resource for non-specialists, this book also contains an extensive bibliography aimed at the serious researcher. Contributors are: Beatriz de Alba-Koch, Edward Behrend-Martínez, Cristian Berco, Harald E. Braun, Susan Byrne, Bernardo Canteñs, Frederick A. de Armas, William Eamon, Stephanie Fink, Enrique García Santo-Tomás, J.A. Garrido Ardila, Marya T. Green-Mercado, Elizabeth Teresa Howe, Hilaire Kallendorf, Henry Kamen, Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, Michael J. Levin, Ruth MacKay, Fabien Montcher, Ignacio Navarrete, Jeffrey Schrader, Lía Schwartz, Elizabeth Ashcroft Terry, and Elvira Vilches.

A panoramic, state-of-the-art handbook destined to chart a course for future work in the field of early modern Hispanic theater studies. It begins in the closet with an essay on Celestina as closet drama and moves out into the court to explore intersections with courtly love. An essay on the comedia and the classics demonstrates this genre’s firm grounding in the classical tradition, despite Lope de Vega’s famous protestations to the contrary. Distinct but related genres such as the autos sacramentales and the entremeses also make an appearance. The traditional themes of honor and wife-murder share the stage with less familiar topics like the incorporation of animals into performance. This volume covers the urban space of the city in Spain and Portugal as well as uncharted territories in the New World and Japan. Essays on emblems and the picaresque round out this anthology, along with studies of theatrical representations of early modern innovations in science and technology. The book concludes with two different psychoanalytical approaches, focused on melancholy and Lacanian tragedy, respectively. This collection incorporates the work of younger scholars along with established names in the field to synthesize the most exciting recent work on the comedia and related forms of early modern Hispanic theatrical production. Contributors include: Ignacio Arellano, Frederick de Armas, Henry Sullivan, Edward Friedman, A. Robert Lauer, Manuel Delgado, Adrienne Martín, Enrique García Santo Tomás, Matthew Stroud, Teresa Scott Soufas, Enrique Fernández, María Mercedes Carrión, Robert Bayliss, Ted Bergman, Cory Reed, Maryrica Lottman, Christina Lee, and Enrique Duarte.

Traces the processes and paradoxes at work in the late parodic poetry of Luis de Góngora and Lope de Vega, illuminating correlations and connections.