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Bulletin of the Comediantes
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.1

Number of Followers: 2

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ISSN (Print) 0007-5108 - ISSN (Online) 1944-0928
Published by Project MUSE

[306 journals]

Prologue
- Abstract: As the Bulletin of the Comediantes enters its eighth decade of continuous publication, we present volume 71, numbers 1 and 2, together. The occasion that inspired this departure from our twice-yearly publication was particularly auspicious: this double issue serves, in effect, as the selected proceedings of a colloquium held in Madrid on 6–7 July 2018 in honor of Margaret R. Greer, professor emeritus of Duke University. The director of the Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE), Ana Santos Aramburo, launched the colloquium with an eloquent assessment of Greer's impact. The inaugural statement struck us as a powerful distillation of the research agendas that have long inspired this journal. For this reason, we were ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
John Jay Allen (1932–2019)
- Abstract: conocí a jay por primera vez en octubre de 1989, cuando ambos participamos, junto con John Varey, Andrew Gurr, Ángel García, John Orrell, Thomas Middleton y otros, en unas jornadas de trabajo convocadas por el Ayuntamiento de Alcalá de Henares, para hacer recomendaciones sobre el futuro de la recientemente descubierta Casa de Comedias. Jay fue el primer hispanista en ser contactado por los descubridores del teatro, Miguel Ángel Coso y Juan Sanz, a raíz de la publicación de su pionero libro sobre el Corral del Príncipe: The Reconstruction of a Spanish Golden Age Playhouse (UP of Florida) en 1983. Llamo pionero a su libro por cuatro razones: (1) Jay fue el primero en intentar una reconstrucción visual de un teatro ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Discurso inaugural del coloquio Manos Teatrales, Culturas Materiales: los
Itinerarios de Investigación de Margaret Greer
- Abstract: en primer lugar, felicitar a los organizadores por la celebración de este merecido homenaje; y en segundo lugar, agradecer el honor de poder dirigirme a todos ustedes para abrir esta jornada1. Es para mí una gran satisfacción recordar lo que ha significado la figura de Margaret Greer, dedicada a la labor de investigación desde principios de los años ochenta hasta la actualidad, para la Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE).Margaret siempre se ha sentido atraída por los libros quizá porque, como ella misma confiesa en su "Autobiografía", el olor de los libros le transporta a su casa (Greer 237). Probablemente esa es la razón por la que en la Sala Cervantes de la BNE le gusta sentarse siempre en el mismo pupitre, el ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Las Sententiae de Andrés Eborense (Lyon, 1557) en las dedicatorias de
comedias y en otras obras de Lope de Vega
- Abstract: ¡Sabrosa cosa es esto de latinizar!Las Sententiae del Eborense en las dedicatorias de las Partes 13 a 20 de ComediasEn algunas ediciones recientes de textos de Lope de Vega se ha apuntado la posibilidad—una certeza para nosotros, como aquí intentaremos mostrar—de que, a la hora de incluir en sus textos sentencias de autores antiguos, aprovechara la compilación de ellas publicada por vez primera en Lyon 1557 a nombre de Andreas Eborensis y reeditada varias veces (por diferentes impresores y en diversas ciudades europeas) durante los ochenta años siguientes1; de ese modo se convirtió en uno de los repertorios de erudición más difundidos durante esa época, y aun en las posteriores. En realidad, las sententiae se ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
El texto de La adúltera penitente: comicidad, censura y exigencias
escénicas en una comedia de santos
- Abstract: los textos teatrales áureos, dado que llegaban a un público mucho más amplio que el de las obras poéticas y narrativas, sufrieron la intensa vigilancia de la censura, así como la necesidad de adaptarse a las necesidades escénicas de las compañías teatrales y de los lugares de representación. El género de la comedia de santos, que abría sus argumentos a pasajes escabrosos o cercanos a lo erótico, y que tendía a la espectacularidad en la representación debido a las intervenciones sobrenaturales, era aún más susceptible de padecer tanto la intervención de los censores como los ajustes escenográficos.Buen ejemplo de ello lo constituye La adúltera penitente, comedia hagiográfica escrita en colaboración por tres ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
The Text of Calderón's Luis Pérez el gallego
- Abstract: luis pérez el gallego is an unusual play, possibly written when Calderón was in his late twenties. The palace accounts show that it was performed by the company of Antonio de Prado on 21 December in either 1628 or 1629, probably the former.1 The plot has a historical setting: for example, two of the characters arrive in Sanlúcar, where "el duque" is "general capitán" in the war which the king is waging against England. Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Andalusia) was the home of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who commanded the Armada Invencible of 1588, and a later passage has one of the characters about to embark in that fleet. These references seem to place the events in and just prior to May 1588; however, the Portuguese ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Everett Hesse, Vera Tassis y el texto de las comedias de Calderón
- Abstract: la principal vía de transmisión de las comedias de Calderón fue, hasta hace relativamente poco, la edición póstuma llevada a cabo por Juan de Vera Tassis de 108 comedias repartidas a docenas en nueve Partes, cuatro de las cuales eran reediciones de las cuatro partes publicadas en vida del poeta con su consentimiento o colaboración activa. Fue Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, en la biografía de Calderón que publicó en 1924, quien inició un cambio en la actitud hacia Vera y sus ediciones (Cotarelo, "Ensayo"). Cotarelo hablaba de Vera y sus labores con desprecio y hasta hostilidad, y esta actitud adversa fue adoptada posteriormente por otros estudiosos y por muchos editores de sus comedias, sobre todo después de la ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Lope's La dama boba and the Seduction of the Academy
- Abstract: for Meg, per aequa et iniquaSi tratáredes de amores, con dos onzas que sepáis de la lengua toscana, toparéis con León Hebreo que os hincha las medidas.it is now commonplace to cite neoplatonism as the informing philosophy of Lope de Vega's entertaining comedy La dama boba, either as the text's sincere or ironic foundation. Interestingly, mid-century analyses of La dama boba by Fucilla, Wardropper, and Zamora Vicente did not mention Neoplatonism at all. It was Margaret Wilson who set the wheels for that association in motion, observing in her 1969 study that "love speeds up [Finea's] mental development," a process through which Lope dramatizes "one element of the popular philosophy of the sixteenth century" (77). ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Playing Gender: Toward a Quantitative Comparison of Female Roles in Lope
de Vega and Shakespeare
- Abstract: In the winter season of 2013, a British acting company directed by Laurence Boswell performed a cycle of seventeenth-century Spanish plays at the Ustinov Theater in Bath, United Kingdom. The three comedias chosen for what would be Boswell's third season of Spanish Golden Age drama were Tirso de Molina's Don Gil de las calzas verdes and Lope de Vega's La dama boba and El castigo sin venganza. Translated into English, these plays were performed by actors and intended for audiences who shared the tacit assumption that the theater of Habsburg Spain strongly resembled that of Shakespeare and English Tudor-Stuart playwrights. And their belief stands on solid ground: in an academic environment increasingly drawn toward ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
La presencia escénica de Andrés de Claramonte en el Siglo de Oro a
partir de las bases de datos Manos y CATCOM
- Abstract: la figura de andrés de claramonte, actor, director teatral y dramaturgo de origen murciano, es la de una especie de enfant terrible en el panorama del teatro áureo español por su compleja relación con textos canónicos y las opiniones encontradas que ha generado entre la crítica durante más de un siglo. Su lugar en la historia teatral se mueve tortuosamente entre la acusación de ser un mero plagiador o refundidor de comedias de otros poetas y autor de piezas mediocres, y la imagen opuesta, la de un dramaturgo de cuya pluma salieron varias obras de gran calidad. Su recepción crítica ha evolucionado, por tanto, desde las acusaciones vertidas a partir del siglo XIX por Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, Marcelino Menéndez ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Espejos sonoros en Eco y Narciso: un análisis cuantitativo y poético de
la asonancia en Calderón
- Abstract: ¿Tendrá razón Sócrates en el Fedro y tantos colegas universitarios en todo el mundo cuando se quejan del poco uso de la memoria que hacen nuestros estudiantes' ¿Contribuiría precisamente la escritura al olvido' Platón redactó acerca de esta pregunta las siguientes líneas (son palabras pronunciadas por Sócrates con las que él recrea la respuesta del rey egipcio Thamus al inventor de las letras):Porque es olvido lo que producirán en las almas de quienes las aprendan, al descuidar la memoria, ya que, fiándose de lo escrito, llegarán al recuerdo desde fuera, a través de caracteres ajenos, no desde dentro, desde ellos mismos y por sí mismos. No es, pues, un fármaco de la memoria lo que has hallado, sino un simple ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
La primera puesta en escena de Los tres mayores prodigios de Calderón
- Abstract: la primera representación de Los tres mayores prodigios en la Noche de San Juan de 1636 supuso una variación de estrategia en los estrenos de las fiestas palaciegas de carácter mitológico por parte de Pedro Calderón de la Barca, tal vez provocada por complicadas experiencias anteriores. De hecho, en el estreno de El mayor encanto, amor, en 1635, la complicada tramoya, la excesiva duración de la representación, la representación en un estanque con naves y maquinaria compleja y, en fin, el uso de fuegos artificiales generaron problemas de representabilidad y hasta un accidente que costó la vida a algunos hombres. Este cambio implica el abandono momentáneo de las tramoyas más complejas que tuvieron tanto peso en el ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
El Coliseo del Buen Retiro y la diplomacia española del Barroco
- Abstract: desde el inicio de la construcción del Palacio del Buen Retiro en 1630, el conde duque de Olivares, Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel (1587–1645), consideró este lugar como un espacio extraordinario para la celebración del poder y la majestad real a través de ceremonias y festejos cuyo contenido y calado político pudiera controlar fácilmente gracias a su condición de favorito de Felipe IV (1605–65). Más adelante, los sucesores del Rey Planeta también supieron apreciar las virtudes de aquel palacio suburbano para la construcción y proyección de la narrativa de exaltación de la Monarquía Hispánica. Inicialmente, y hasta la construcción del Coliseo en 1640, las representaciones teatrales se harían en escenarios más o menos ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
El muerto disimulado / Presumed Dead by Ângela de Azevedo (review)
- Abstract: ângela de azevedo is one of the many playwrights who has been rediscovered thanks to the rise of women's studies over the past few decades. Her work is stylistically sophisticated, linguistically nimble, and often witty. Author of three extant plays, Azevedo has enjoyed somewhat of a renaissance as more editions of her work appear both in their original Spanish and in English translation. Valerie Hegstrom and Catherine Larson have published an extraordinary bilingual edition of Azevedo's El muerto disimulado/Presumed Dead. The side-by-side Spanish and English format of the edition enables instructors to teach the play in a variety of instructional settings, including in language, literature, and performing arts ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Cultures of the Fragment: Uses of the Iberian Manuscript, 1100–1600 by
Heather Bamford (review)
- Abstract: near the end of the film version of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (directed by Anthony Minghella, 1996), the British archaeologist Peter Maddox (Julian Wadham) attempts to apologize to his friend Count László de Almásy (Ralph Fiennes): "I have to teach myself not to read too much into everything. It comes from too long having to read so much into hardly anything at all." As an aspiring medievalist in the mid-90s, I read this apology as a warning. Surrounded by fragments, bits, and scraps, and (more importantly) lacking the training at that point to deal with them, I braced myself for the hermeneutic shambles that medieval studies might just make of my life.Two decades later, and having never fully resolved ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Theatre and the English Public from Reformation to Revolution by Katrin
Beushausen (review)
- Abstract: katrin beushausen's historical survey is the latest monograph dedicated to the relationship between the public sphere and theater in early modern England, a topic that has recently been attracting critical attention, for example in Jeffrey Doty's book Shakespeare, Popularity and the Public Sphere (Cambridge UP, 2017), already reviewed in this journal (vol. 69, no. 2, pp. 143–45). Both monographs address the usefulness of adapting the concept of the public sphere as defined by Jürgen Habermas for the eighteenth century in order to analyze the new roles of commoners in early modern society and contemplate their presence in social discourse. Beushausen approaches this incarnation of the public sphere based on two key ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance ed. by James C. Bulman
(review)
- Abstract: james c. bulman's clear and concise introduction, entitled "Cross-Currents in Performance Criticism," brilliantly frames the history of performance criticism from the early twentieth century to the present, proposing a "myth of origins" to contextualize the sobering reality that "audiences just a few decades ago would not have recognized much of what now passes for Shakespeare in performance" (1). New forms of adaptation and different sorts of performance venues have radically changed the relationship between actors and spectators, and the "digital revolution" has fundamentally altered the "concept of'live' performance" (1).Organized into four parts that cut across categories, the thirty-six essays evince the many ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
La cisma de Ingalaterra by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (review)
- Abstract: calderón's la cisma de ingalaterra has provoked a flurry of interest in recent years, having long suffered relative neglect. Its characters were the subject of Braulio Fernández-Biggs's 2012 monograph, Calderón y Shakespeare: los personajes en La cisma de Ingalaterra y Henry VIII (Iberoamericana / Vervuert). An adaptation of the play was staged by Spain's Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico (CNTC) in 2015, and in April 2018 La cisma was the focus of an international symposium co-hosted by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Asociación Internacional de Teatro Español y Novohispano de los Siglos de Oro (AITENSO), and organized by Susana Hernández Araico. It is to be hoped that the publication of ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Poesía by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (review)
- Abstract: calderón's ability to blend seamlessly the genres of poetry and drama is universally recognized, but what is perhaps less appreciated is his corpus of poems, which reveals the playwright's evolution as a lyricist. Luis Iglesia Feijoo and Antonio Sánchez Jiménez's critical edition of Calderón's Poesía gathers that corpus for the first time. They emphasize, in particular, the influence of Góngora and Lope de Vega on Calderón's poetry: "En este sentido, la poesía no dramática se revela esencial para comprender la evolución literaria de Calderón: tras unos inicios de la mano de Lope, incorpora elementos gongorizantes hasta construir su estilo más característico, que va depurando después en su producción final" (22). ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
El primer refugio del hombre y probática piscina by Pedro
Calderón de la Barca (review)
- Abstract: la presente edición crítica de la loa y el auto está realizada con esmero y contiene abundantes notas explicativas. Posee, además, la virtud de ir acompañada de numerosas ilustraciones y de la partitura de la música, intercalada en los lugares donde hay texto cantado. La loa es, en este caso, una adición necesaria, pues tal como explica Zafra, el auto "está concebido como una continuación de la historia introducida por la loa" (37). La conexión entre la loa y el auto no es solamente temática, sino también teatral: "Estas referencias escénicas [de la loa] se corresponden perfectamente con [l]a memoria de apariencias de El primer refugio" (45).El estudio introductorio de Zafra brilla por su lucidez y erudición en las ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Un castigo en tres venganzas by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (review)
- Abstract: con la publicación de Un castigo en tres venganzas de Calderón de la Barca, Margaret Rich Greer y Francisco Sáez Raposo nos ofrecen la primera edición crítica moderna de esta comedia. El texto más reciente hasta ahora era el editado por Ángel Valbuena Briones incluido en Obras completas (Aguilar, 1959) de Calderón, pero con el título De un castigo, tres venganzas, el cual también aparece en numerosas ediciones. Como explican en la introducción, los editores creen que la variación en el título se debe a la confusión que se origina por la comedia De un castigo, dos venganzas de Juan Pérez de Montalbán y por la fortuna editorial de las primeras ediciones de ambas comedias, puesto que las dos fueron publicadas a costa ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Las amazonas de España / La hazaña mayor de Alcides by José de
Cañizares (review)
- Abstract: literary scholars have dedicated less attention to early eighteenth-century Spain than it deserves given the changes in dynasty, in domestic and international politics, and in literary and artistic tastes that characterize the period. Ignacio López Alemany's excellent critical edition of two libretti by José de Cañizares (1676–1750) is an important step towards remedying this lacuna. As he notes in the introduction, scholars of this period need editions that include not only extraliterary aspects but also the political, economic, and social conditions in which the works were composed: "son contextos que determinan y coproducen el mensaje" (16). Thanks to his experiences in the archival study of court theater ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
La aparición de los libros plúmbeos y los modos de escribir la historia.
De Pedro de Castro al Inca Garcilaso de la Vega by José Cárdenas Bunsen
(review)
- Abstract: josé cárdenas bunsen sets out to answer two straightforward yet deceptively simple questions about the false parchments, relics, and lead books discovered in Granada in the racially charged context of the aftermath of the Morisco revolt of the Alpujarras: first, "¿qué impacto produjeron los descubrimientos del Sacromonte de Granada en los presupuestos de las disciplinas relacionadas con la reconstrucción del pasado a finales del siglo XVI'"; second, "¿cómo se articula la red intelectual de sus tempranos estudiosos'" (18). To answer these questions, Cárdenas Bunsen offers a set of five case studies that provide substantial insights for scholars of early modern Iberian literature, history, and material culture ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Nacer en palacio. El ritual del nacimiento en la corte de los Austrias by
María Cruz de Carlos Varona (review)
- Abstract: nacer en palacio is a much-needed contribution to scholarship on early modern Spanish women's lives and a gendered historiography of the Spanish Habsburg court. The confluence of social science, obstetrical practices, and history of art in this generously illustrated study of royal pregnancy and childbirth makes a compelling argument for maternity as a field of research in its own right, with the potential to change academic approaches to the history of the family as well as material culture and court ritual. The authority and physical activity of women as midwives and birth attendants in Spanish accounts and visual depictions of these events challenge the models of feminine silence and passivity in literary and ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
El arte de la subversión en la España inquisitorial: Fernando de Rojas y
Francisco Delicado (con dos notas de Cervantes) by Manuel da Costa Fontes
(review)
- Abstract: in the preface to this translation and update of his study of literary modes of subversion (originally published in 2005 as The Art of Subversion in Inquisitorial Spain: Rojas and Delicado [Purdue UP]), Manuel da Costa Fontes affirms: "traté de poner el libro al día, incorporando la crítica pertinente que ha aparecido durante los últimos años" (15). While the Spanish-language version represents a solid contribution to the field, it would have benefited from deeper engagement with scholarship published since 2005. This is not to suggest that no changes have been made. In this new edition, Costa Fontes cites from the Spanish translation of Henry Kamen's now classic book on the Spanish Inquisition (La Inquisición ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Jerónimo Antonio Gil and the Idea of the Spanish Enlightenment by Kelly
Donahue-Wallace (review)
- Abstract: the seven chapters of kelly donahue-wallace's profusely illustrated and thoroughly documented study present the most comprehensive and up-to-date biography of Jerónimo Antonio Gil, a key figure in the artistic and cultural milieu of the Hispanic Enlightenment. Through a chronological account integrating art historical analysis and documentary evidence, the book guides us through Gil's transatlantic life and career, from his initial introduction into Madrid's artistic scene to his fortunes and misfortunes in the viceregal capital of New Spain. As Donahue-Wallace acknowledges, for decades Gil has remained a controversial figure in the art history of eighteenth-century Spain and Mexico. His significant role in the ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion by J. H. Elliott (review)
- Abstract: almost a century ago, in his 1923 inaugural lecture at the Congress of Historical Sciences in Brussels, Belgian historian Henri Pirenne stated that the belligerents of the recent world war had "put two sciences in particular under requisition: chemistry and history. The former provided them with explosives and gases; the latter with pretexts justifications or excuses" ("De la méthode comparative en histoire," Fourth International Congress of Historical Sciences, 9 April 1923, Wikisource, fr.wikisource.org/wiki/De_la_méthode_comparative_en_histoire). History had been enlisted to justify nationalist claims on both sides. To avoid the repetition of such manipulations of the discipline, Pirenne advocated the adoption ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Hercules and the King of Portugal: Icons of Masculinity and Nation in
Calderón's Spain by Dian Fox (review)
- Abstract: "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," laments the insomniac king Henry IV in part 2 of Shakespeare's play of that name (3.1.1735); his successor Henry V similarly bemoans the sleeplessness that high office occasions when he envies the repose that toil bestows on the lowest laborer whereas the monarch wakefully tosses in his grand bed of state, the gorgeous signs of his rule unavailing: "Not all of these, laid in bed majestical / Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave, / Who with a body filled and vacant mind, / Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread, / Never sees the horrid night, the child of hell" (Henry V, 4.1.253–56). Charlemagne joins this regal litany in his reluctant response to the call ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Monarchy Transformed: Princes and Their Elites in Early Modern Western
Europe ed. by Robert von Friedeburg and John Morrill (review)
- Abstract: the essays gathered in monarchy transformed result from scholarly conversations among a group of European historians in two conferences organized in 2008 and 2011. The volume analyzes the relationships that princes and their elites maintained during the early modern period. With a strong emphasis on the seventeenth century, the essays offer an up-to-date review of the latest historiographical developments related to the study of the political and court cultures of Western Europe.Readers of the Bulletin of the Comediantes will find of special interest four articles that focus on relationships between princes and elites in territories related to the Iberian monarchies and the multinational Habsburg empire. The essays ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
The Golden Age of Spanish Drama ed. by Barbara Fuchs (review)
- Abstract: programs in comparative literature and interdisciplinary studies increasingly call for readings in translation, yet few English-language anthologies of early modern Spanish theater are available. The Golden Age of Spanish Drama fills a need by providing not only a selection of plays by early modern Spanish dramatists, but also background material and criticism suitable both for the classroom and a general Anglophone audience. The volume consists of three parts: the texts of five Golden Age plays, a collection of writings on theater and culture by early modern thinkers, and fourteen essays by modern comedia scholars. In addition, the substantial introduction by Barbara Fuchs provides an overview of Golden Age Spain ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Beyond Sight: Engaging the Senses in Iberian Literatures and Cultures,
1200–1750 ed. by Ryan D. Giles and Steven Wagschal (review)
- Abstract: this ambitious volume aims to shed light on the representation of the nonvisual senses, a theme rarely broached in the field of nonmodern Iberian studies, despite recent scholarship on sight and the emotions, or what the editors Ryan D. Giles and Steven Wagschal call the "sensory turn" (4) in the humanities and social sciences. This less trodden path of the other four senses constitutes fertile ground for exploration, particularly given the different roles that senses such as smell or sound played in the shifting sociohistoric circumstances covered by the book's more than five-hundred-year timeframe. The volume greatly illuminates the varying roles of the nonvisual senses, especially olfaction and touch.The book is ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Netherlandish Art and Luxury Goods in Renaissance Spain. Studies in Honor
of Professor Jan Karel Steppe (1918–2009) by Daan van Heesch, Robrecht
Janssen, and Jan Van der Stock (review)
- Abstract: art historians of early modern spain are increasingly attentive to the artistic connections between the Peninsula and the wider Spanish Habsburg domains. This new focus showcases the need to revisit and broaden the scope of the "Spanish Renaissance." More broadly, it reflects the ongoing globalization of art history as the discipline questions just what national boundaries mean with regard to artistic production. This Festschrift offered in tribute to the late Leuven art historian Jan Karel Steppe (1918–2009) constitutes a valuable contribution to these discussions. Comprising fifteen essays by international scholars, the volume "reflects upon the diverse ways in which Netherlandish works of art permeated the ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Staging the Spanish Golden Age: Translation and Performance by Kathleen
Jeffs (review)
- Abstract: this interdisciplinary monograph combines the author's firsthand experience in comedia performance with the literary analysis of a theater scholar, and the resulting study enriches the ongoing conversation about comedia performance for English-speaking audiences. Kathleen Jeffs nods to recent scholarship by Catherine Boyle and David Johnston, Susan L. Fischer, Susan Paun de García and Donald R. Larson, and Duncan Wheeler, among others, while providing her own insightful contribution to this growing field. Jeffs leverages her work as translator and script consultant during the Royal Shakespeare Company's (hereafter, RSC) 2004–05 Spanish season to offer a behind-the-scenes view of the productions and, compellingly ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Disabled Bodies in Early Modern Spanish Literature. Prostitutes, Aging
Women and Saints by Encarnación Juárez-Almendros (review)
- Abstract: one of the challenges facing scholars who work on disability in medieval, early modern, and eighteenth-century culture is that most work in disability studies has concentrated on modern and contemporary culture. For Hispanists, the fact that this scholarship has been predominately Anglophone in focus is an additional challenge. For these reasons, Encarnación Juárez-Almendros's book—which examines early modern Spanish texts from the vantage point of feminist disability studies while keeping in mind the historical and social context that gave rise to them—is welcome. In the very first sentence of her introduction, she sets out for her readers what she plans to accomplish: "to examine, from the perspective of feminist ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Ambiguous Antidotes: Virtue as Vaccine for Vice in Early Modern Spain by
Hilaire Kallendorf (review)
- Abstract: hilaire kallendorf's Ambiguous Antidotes: Virtue as Vaccine for Vice in Early Modern Spain frames Spanish comedia within the Counter-Reformation discourse on moral action, or what she calls "Virtue." The word "antidote" in the book's title nods toward Derrida's understanding of language as pharmakon, or substance that can contain the seed of its own undoing. The alliterative subtitle, "Virtue as Vaccine for Vice," makes this link explicit, for vaccines rely for their protective properties on injecting into the patient's bloodstream a tiny amount of the contagion that they aim to avert. Kallendorf links this pharmacological conceit to the realm of ethical behavior. As the dust jacket warns, "Ambiguous Antidotes ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Women's Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women's Theater
(1650–1750) by Theresa Varney Kennedy (review)
- Abstract: in la poétique (1639), the French dramatic theorist and playwright La Mesnardiére wrote that women on stage should not be portrayed as heroic or clever, since these characteristics contradicted the rules of vraisemblance or verisimilitude (qtd. in Kennedy 2). But, as Theresa Varney Kennedy demonstrates, women playwrights often did not follow his recommendations. Continuing the work of scholars such as Perry Gethner, Nathalie Grande, and Erica Harth, Kennedy focuses on heroines in plays by women from 1637 to 1761. Kennedy is particularly interested in rationality as a possibility for women and the ways in which this theme is developed in plays by women in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.After a brief ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Blood Matters: Studies in European Literature and Thought, 1400–1700 ed.
by Bonnie Lander Johnson and Eleanor Decamp (review)
- Abstract: bonnie lander johnson and eleanor Decamp's impressive new edited volume addresses the matter of blood in early modern literature and culture emphasizing, in particular, the (occasionally) overlapping discourses of medical and material encounters with "the red stuff that runs in human veins" (1). At the same time, this volume makes an assertion: blood matters to medieval early modern literature and culture, although it matters in different ways and with varied consequences within the legal, literary, medical, and religious fields, in addition to serving as a flexible index of health, class, and gender. Scholars invested in medieval and early modern blood will find a great deal of value in this collection, which ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Technologies of Theatre: Joseph Furttenbach and the Transfer of Mechanical
Knowledge in Early Modern Theatre Cultures ed. by Jan Lazardzig and Hole
Rößler (review)
- Abstract: this monograph—a double-issue of the journal Zeitsprünge: Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit (vol. 20, no. 3–4)—examines Munich, Bayerische Staatbibliothek, Codex iconographicus 401, an anonymous early seventeenth-century manuscript attributed here to Joseph Furttenbach the Elder (1591–1667), who is well known to theater historians and musicologists for his various publications on architecture, especially those regarding theater buildings and stage machinery. The codex (29 leaves) contains Furttenbach's notes on Florentine theatrical entertainments from 1608 to 1617 and their stage machinery (with annotations and commentary on engravings by Remigio Cantagallina and Jacques Callot); the original can be seen at ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Digresionario poético by Licenciado Mesa del Olmeda (review)
- Abstract: el digresionario poético del licenciado Mesa del Olmeda es una preceptiva de finales del siglo XVI cuyo texto fue dado a conocer por Víctor Infantes en 1991. En el presente volumen lo estudia y edita minuciosamente Alejandro Martínez Berriochoa, quien ya había publicado en 2012 una edición de El arte poética en romance castellano (Alcalá, 1580) de Miguel Sánchez de Lima (Clásicos Hispánicos). Un primer mérito de esta edición del Digresionario es dar a la luz un texto al que no se había prestado suficiente atención, y que puede ahora incluirse y valorarse en la tradición de preceptivas hispanas que poblaron tardíamente el último tercio del siglo XVI. De este y otros méritos debe hacerse partícipe a Nieves Baranda ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Segunda parte de comedias, vol. VII. El caballero, El parecido, La fingida
Arcadia by Agustín Moreto (review)
- Abstract: el equipo moretiano, constituido en el marco del Grupo PROTEO y radicado en la Universidad de Burgos, publicó en 2018 el séptimo volumen de la Segunda parte de comedias del poeta áureo Agustín Moreto bajo la acertada dirección de María Luisa Lobato y coordinación de Guillermo Gómez Sánchez-Ferrer. Se trata de un ambicioso pero necesario proyecto inaugurado en 2008 con la publicación del primer volumen de la Primera parte de comedias, y que ha dado a conocer una serie de piezas magistrales de quien es hoy considerado uno de los más sobresalientes comediógrafos de la historia del teatro español. En este caso, nos encontramos ante un ejemplar bellamente editado que comprende tres comedias que, acaso por ser ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
El teatro barroco como campo de juego. Estudios sobre Lope de Vega y Tirso
de Molina by Wolfram Nitsch (review)
- Abstract: the german original of wolfram nitsch's recently published study appeared in the year 2000. This new version is the most profound and far-ranging account known to me of the classical Spanish theater in relation to play, conceived of as drama within the drama, role-playing within the play, disguise, adoption of another's costume, other species of impersonation, games, betting, cheating, gambling at cards, playing chess, and so on. In the preface to the translation of 2018 (ix–xiii), the author details the particular difficulty of getting the work from German into Spanish. Unlike French (e.g., Le jeu de Saint Nicolas) or German (e.g., der Spiel, denoting play; Lustspiel, comedy; Trauerspiel, tragedy; ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Primer tomo de comedias. Volumen 1.3: Olimpa y Vireno, El señor don Juan
de Austria, Los amantes de Teruel by Juan Pérez de Montalbán (review)
- Abstract: this volume is the result of work conducted under the auspices of the Claudia Demattè-directed project Un dramaturgo madrileño recuperado: Juan Pérez de Montalbán; it is the third of four installments of critical editions of the twelve plays comprising Juan Pérez de Montalbán's Primer tomo de comedias of 1635, although this third volume contains, in fact, the final three plays of the original collection: Olimpa y Vireno, El señor don Juan de Austria, and Los amantes de Teruel, edited and introduced here, respectively, by Marcella Trambaioli, Roberta Alviti, and Teresa Ferrer Valls. The thematic and generic variety observable between these three comedias is emblematic of the diversity of the compositions in the ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Dramatic Geography: Romance, Intertheatricality, and Cultural Encounter in
Early Modern Mediterranean Drama by Laurence Publicover (review)
- Abstract: to begin: a caveat for bulletin readers: although Publicover's title announces a focus on "Mediterranean drama," his study considers exclusively English plays. Two central claims will nonetheless be of interest to scholars working more broadly across the national traditions. First, Publicover argues that early modern theater was particularly suited to the representation of far-flung romance geographies, given how flexible and minimal its scenery and stage apparatus were. As is well known to scholars of the comedia, "location was established through a number of strategies, but most importantly through the words of the actors" (22). This argument works against teleological readings that might equate the increased ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Plato's Persona: Marsilio Ficino, Renaissance Humanism, and Platonic
Traditions by Denis J.-J. Robichaud (review)
- Abstract: in plato's persona, denis robichaud studies Italian Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino's writings with the keen eye and skills of a multilingual classical philologist, yet also through the broad perspective of an intellectual historian. Noting that Ficino is usually read for his scholarly contributions rather than his rhetorical skills, Robichaud aptly employs that additional lens to highlight the Italian philosopher's importance for both intellectual and creative letters. The result is an impressive study that elucidates the surprisingly poetic aspects of Ficino's thought and practices. Of particular interest for readers of this journal will be Robichaud's exploration of the Italian philosopher's staging of ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Political Culture in Spanish America, 1500–1830 by Jaime E.
Rodríguez O. (review)
- Abstract: jaime e. rodríguez o. has built a distinguished career as a historian of Spanish America, with a primary focus on what Atlanticists call the Age of Revolutions (1750–1850). His studies, drawing on extensive research into the government institutions, individual policy makers, and communities of the Kingdom of Quito and the Viceroyalty of New Spain (today's Ecuador and Mexico, respectively), have long offered a comparative framework with the rest of Spanish America and also with comparable cases in British North American and European imperial history. This volume is a compilation of eight individual articles and lectures from the past twenty years, some of which were previously published in two volumes in Spanish as ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Tragic Drama in the Golden Age of Spain: Seven Essays on the Definition of
a Genre by Henry W. Sullivan (review)
- Abstract: sullivan's splendid study is presented in seven interwoven essays that cover a lot of ground in great depth. They move nimbly from consideration of early modern literary treatises to German Romantic and idealist philosophy to Greek mythology and drama, Reformation and Counter-Reformation theology, and more; from analysis of plays by Luis Velez de Guevara and Lope de Vega to those by Antonio Mira de Amescua, Tirso de Molina, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and others. Those familiar with Sullivan's decades of scholarship will see its stamp on several of the new essays, along with his characteristic luminous prose and affable style. The thread that Sullivan keenly advances throughout the chapters of Tragic Drama in the ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Cartas (1604–1633) by Lope de Vega (review)
- Abstract: pocos textos muestran tan detalladamente la vida intima de un escritor como las cartas de Lope de Vega. En ellas no solo quedan patentes sus rencillas literarias más o menos sangrientas (contra Cervantes, contra Góngora, contra Vélez de Guevara), el proceso de gestación de muchos de sus poemas y comedias (El mejor mozo de España, La burgalesa de Lerma, El bastardo Mudarra, Los ramilletes de Madrid, El mayor imposible), su relación con actores y autores (Juan de Morales Medrano, Juan Cuadrado, Hernán Sánchez de Vargas, Alonso de Riquelme, Roque de Figueroa), sino también sus temores por la salud de sus hijos, sus achaques, sus problemas de visión—por los que se vio obligado a escribir y leer con gafas desde 1612— ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
Comedias Parte XVII by Lope de Vega (review)
- Abstract: in one of the many loas collected in his El viaje entretenido (1603), the Spanish poet Agustín de Rojas Villandrando describes his compatriot Lope de Vega as "el Apolo de nuestros poetas," who had written "tantas farsas por momentos, / y todas ellas tan buenas, / que ni yo sabré contarlas, / ni hombre humano encarecerlas" (edited by Jean Pierre Ressot, 2nd ed., Castalia, 1995, p. 155). The exact number of plays that Lope de Vega wrote remains uncertain to this day: at one point he himself humbly claimed to have penned over fifteen hundred, although scholars nowadays believe it was probably closer to eight hundred. Many of them were published in large weighty anthologies; others were printed and sold individually as ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
San Nicolás de Tolentino by Lope de Vega (review)
- Abstract: roy norton has developed his university of oxford doctoral dissertation (2014) into an exemplary critical edition of Lope de Vega's San Nicolás de Tolentino, first published in 1641 in the Veinticuatro parte perfecta de las comedias del Fénix de España. Norton's text of the play, which is based on the princeps edition, is accompanied by a profuse number of footnotes in Spanish. These footnotes discuss Lope's references and allusions to biblical and theological subjects, early modern theatrical conventions, and sociocultural as well as historical contexts. They provide translations of Latin terms and phrases and explanations of early modern words and expressions that present-day readers might have difficulty ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
"Los cielos se agotaron de prodigios": Essays in honor of Frederick A. de
Armas ed. by Christopher B. Weimer et al. (review)
- Abstract: some books are easy to review, others are difficult. The recent Festschrift to Frederick A. de Armas edited by a team of his former doctoral students is somewhere in between. On one hand, it is difficult to assess because it consists of thirty-one widely differing texts about which little can be summarized: a "tribute," an introduction, and twenty-nine scholarly essays with very different subjects and approaches (followed by the impressive curriculum vitae and publication list of Professor de Armas that actually deserve an essay of their own, presenting as they do the image of an exceptional career).On the other hand, however, the book is easy to review for many of the same reasons that make it difficult to do so: ... Read More
  PubDate: 2020-04-24T00:00:00-05:00