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The forgery of nobility in literary texts

Christina H. Lee

in The Anxiety of Sameness In Early Modern Spain

The literary texts Lee examines in “Chapter Two” involve scenarios in which hidalgos are threatened by lowborn passers determined to do them harm, and ultimately arrive to the felicitous conclusion ... More

The literary texts Lee examines in “Chapter Two” involve scenarios in which hidalgos are threatened by lowborn passers determined to do them harm, and ultimately arrive to the felicitous conclusion that the established nobility prevails. These fictional narratives and dramas of lowborn passers allow the target reader or audience member to peek into the otherwise mysterious lives of these imagined impostors and proffer the false sense that s/he has an insight on the well-shielded secrets of their deceptive performances. Lee focuses on authors Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo’s El caballero puntual, Diego de Hermosilla’s Diálogo de la vida de los pajes de palacio, Lope de Vega’s El caballero de milagro, Quevedo’s Historia de la vida del buscón llamado don Pablos, Alonso de Castillo Solórzano’s Teresa de Manzanares, and Vicente Espinel’s Relaciones de la vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón. She ends her discussion of social anxiety with an interpretation of the hidalgo hero in Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quijote as a figure who initially incarnates the anxiety of sameness and eventually conquers it.Less

King and Philosopher: El villano en su rincón

Alban K. Forcione

in Majesty and Humanity: Kings and Their Doubles in the Political Drama of the Spanish Golden Age

This chapter focuses on one of Lope de Vega's most puzzling political plays—El villano en su rincon. The play revolves around the fearsome character of royal power; its uncompromising demands for ... More

This chapter focuses on one of Lope de Vega's most puzzling political plays—El villano en su rincon. The play revolves around the fearsome character of royal power; its uncompromising demands for obedience; its unquestionable enactments of justice; its control of its subjects through a ceremonial of fear; and its inescapable presence in the ubiquitous icons, emblems, and regalia of the charismatic king. The various studies that exist have focused on its confrontation of king and peasant-philosopher in a way that fails to do justice to the complexity of its engagement with the problematics of royal power. They have seen the play as a kind of ritual, a static enactment of power, or, in Marcel Bataillon's words, a “political mass”—“a Mass of power that is a court ceremonial”—a “morality play dedicated to the glory of the monarchy,” and a “lesson in monarchical devotion.”Less

Mythological (Mock) Epics: The Stage of Honour

Oliver J. Noble Wood

in A Tale Blazed Through Heaven: Imitation and Invention in the Golden Age of Spain

This chapter considers two mock-heroic treatments of the tale of Mars, Venus, and Vulcan from the first quarter of the seventeenth century: Juan de la Cueva’s ‘Los amores de Marte y Venus’ (1604), a ... More

This chapter considers two mock-heroic treatments of the tale of Mars, Venus, and Vulcan from the first quarter of the seventeenth century: Juan de la Cueva’s ‘Los amores de Marte y Venus’ (1604), a significant amplification of the tale which combines a wide range of previous tellings; and Lope de Vega’s ‘La rosa blanca’ (1624), an eclectic poem that splices together various different classical tales to form a biography of Venus. Focusing on the relationship between imitation and invention, this chapter discusses the use of forms and structures associated with epic poetry, the invention of original back-stories and continuations, and the incorporation of details drawn from commonplace books, iconographical handbooks, and vernacular translations of classical sources. It also examines the influence of contemporary drama, considering the ways in which certain changes and additions made by Cueva and Lope serve to draw out the theatrical qualities inherent in the tale. Finally, this chapter argues that the two poems represent a halfway house, simultaneously looking backwards to the Petrarchan and Neoplatonic topoi prevalent in sixteenth-century treatments of the tale, and forwards to the unequivocably burlesque tellings that would emerge in subsequent decades.Less

The unmasking of Conversos in popular and literary texts

Christina H. Lee

in The Anxiety of Sameness In Early Modern Spain

In “Chapter Four,” Lee analyzes popular songs, anecdotes, aphorisms, and jokes that were invested in perpetuating the image of Conversos as essentially greedy, non-pork-eating Jews. She examines the ... More

In “Chapter Four,” Lee analyzes popular songs, anecdotes, aphorisms, and jokes that were invested in perpetuating the image of Conversos as essentially greedy, non-pork-eating Jews. She examines the construction of the Converso body as a grotesque, sub-human entity in the anonymous Diálogo entre Laín Calvo y Nuño Rasura and in Quevedo’s satirical poetry. She discusses Lope de Vega’s little known play, El galán escarmentado, which specifically addresses the Old Christian anxiety of being unknowingly stained by the passing Conversos through marriage. She concludes her discussion of the fear of passing Conversos with an analysis of Cervantes’ El retablo de las maravillas, a play representing the madness and disorder that ensues when limpieza-obsessed Old Christians find themselves incapable of tagging the impure subjects who, they believe, live amongst them.Less

Exemplary Tragedy: The Social Riposte to Self-Expression

in Role-Play and the World as Stage in the Comedia

This chapter examines the importance of adherence to social role-play and the dangers of self-expression in El duque de Viseo, by Lope de Vega, and La Estrella de Sevilla, of uncertain authorship. It ... More

This chapter examines the importance of adherence to social role-play and the dangers of self-expression in El duque de Viseo, by Lope de Vega, and La Estrella de Sevilla, of uncertain authorship. It explains that both tragedies show that the lives of the social masters must be exemplary in their adherence to the social norm and dramatize the heightened tension in certain circumstances between accepted social role-play and individual antisocial role-play.Less

Foundations

Enrique García Santo-Tomás

in The Refracted Muse: Literature and Optics in Early Modern Spain

“Foundations” concentrates on the years in which Spanish fiction begins absorbing new ideas, dialogue with foreign titles, and understanding the uses of new measuring instruments as they arrived in ... More

“Foundations” concentrates on the years in which Spanish fiction begins absorbing new ideas, dialogue with foreign titles, and understanding the uses of new measuring instruments as they arrived in the Iberian Peninsula. Its first part, “Science (and) fiction: Elements for a new mechanics,” examines a number of texts by Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), Luis de Góngora (1561–1627), Lope de Vega, Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo (1561–1635), and Tirso de Molina (1579–1648). It highlights the different tensions that arise from a personal and from an institutional point of view when these writers—some of them members of the church and educated under a Ptolemaic vision of the cosmos—incorporate new ideas coming from the writings of Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and Nicolaus Copernicus, among others.Less

Hiding at the Margins: Social Pressures and Escapist Role-Play

in Role-Play and the World as Stage in the Comedia

This chapter examines two Golden Age comedies to explore the concept of escapist role-play: Tirso de Molina's Marta la piadosa and Lope de Vega's Los locos de Valencia. It explains that the ... More

This chapter examines two Golden Age comedies to explore the concept of escapist role-play: Tirso de Molina's Marta la piadosa and Lope de Vega's Los locos de Valencia. It explains that the protagonists in both comedies elect to fake a fundamental change to their usual social role because of social pressures, a change which alters all of their subsequent behaviour and the expectations other characters have of them. The chapter also traces the mechanics of this antisocial role-play to understand the comic movement of many a comedia de capa y espada.Less

Conclusion

Christina H. Lee

in The Anxiety of Sameness In Early Modern Spain

In the “Conclusion,” Lee posits two questions that arise from her study of early modern sameness but that fall outside the bounds of her book. The first concerns the reasons why New Christians and ... More

In the “Conclusion,” Lee posits two questions that arise from her study of early modern sameness but that fall outside the bounds of her book. The first concerns the reasons why New Christians and the underprivileged would attempt to subjugate others like themselves. Possible explanations might include a desire to prove his/her (either truthful or false) alliance to the dominant group, and the internalization of the dominant’s belief that his/her lineage and inherited culture is defective. Another inquiry that naturally emerges from Lee’s study is the substantial reduction in discourses that express the anxiety of sameness. She suggests that the decline could be the result of a decrease in the elite’s preoccupation with social infiltration due to the fact that in the 1700s the barriers to enter the nobility were substantially raised and commoners were less likely to pass into the hidalgo class.Less

A Strategy for Self-Expression: The Puppet-Mistress

in Role-Play and the World as Stage in the Comedia

This chapter analyses the use of role-play as a strategy for self-expression in Pedro Calderón de la Barca's La dama duende and Lope de Vega's La discreta enamorada. It explains that the eponymous ... More

This chapter analyses the use of role-play as a strategy for self-expression in Pedro Calderón de la Barca's La dama duende and Lope de Vega's La discreta enamorada. It explains that the eponymous women in these plays use role-play to escape spiritual destruction in a developed and strategic fashion, and that their intentions are positive and forward-looking from the start. The chapter also discusses their success in the use of role-play as a strategic stepping stone to success to ultimately undermine patriarchy's expectations of their long-term role without marginalizing themselves.Less

The Spectacle of Conquest: Epic Conflicts on the Seventeenth-Century Spanish Stage

Imogen Choi

in Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century

This chapter examines how the comedias indianas of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, plays set in the Americas, engage with the Hispanic and ancient Roman epic traditions. The study focuses ... More

This chapter examines how the comedias indianas of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, plays set in the Americas, engage with the Hispanic and ancient Roman epic traditions. The study focuses in particular on the popular cycle of poems inspired by the ongoing conflicts between settlers and indigenous Mapuche on the Chilean frontier of Arauco through an analysis of three early plays, Lope de Vega’s Arauco domado, Ricardo de Turia’s La bellígera española, and the multi-authored Algunas hazañas de las muchas de don García Hurtado de Mendoza. It is argued that the challenge of translating the epics into stage performance resulted in dramatic innovation. Reflecting the many voices and perspectives adopted by the epics concerning the controversial colonization of Chile, and incorporating significant echoes of Virgil and Lucan, the plays eclectically juxtapose competing traditions and accounts. Foregrounding and commenting on the performance of violence, they ostentatiously avoid dramatic and generic closure.Less

Conclusion

Scott K. Taylor

in Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain

This book concludes by studying the reasons behind the importance of honor in Mediterranean societies. The objections of anthropologists in the past two decades that the earlier generations of field ... More

This book concludes by studying the reasons behind the importance of honor in Mediterranean societies. The objections of anthropologists in the past two decades that the earlier generations of field workers exaggerated honor as they looked for a reason to differentiate southern Europe from the modern world of northern Europe and North America have gone relatively unnoticed by people outside the field of anthropology. Spanish culture is also haunted by the ghost of the honor play genre. No matter how vehemently literary critics debunk the notion that the works of Lope de Vega and Calderon offer accurate depictions of their contemporaries' behavior, each new generation who reads the plays will leave with the impression that Golden Age Spain was a society crippled with anxiety over honor and its bloodthirsty demands. It is argued here that honor is not a rigid code but merely a rhetoric—elements of which could be used, if desirable, and disregarded, if unhelpful.Less