Religious and Secular Theater in Golden Age Spain

Susan Paun de García, Professor Emerita of Spanish at Denison University, has written on the seventeenth-century Comedia, and the post-baroque Comedia of the early eighteenth century. With Donald R. Larson, she co-edited The Comedia in English (2008) and, with Harley Erdman, she co-edited Remaking the Comedia (2015).

Donald R. Larson is Emeritus Professor at the Ohio State University. In addition to numerous articles dealing with Spanish theater, he is the author of The Honor Plays of Lope de Vega (1978) and co-editor, with Susan Paun de García, of The Comedia in English (2008).

The essays in this book honor the seminal contributions to the field of early modern Spanish drama of Donald T. Dietz, who has devoted his career to the promotion of classical theater, not just as dramatic poetry but as vibrant performance art. Written by a variety of respected scholars and never before published, the twenty-two essays, organized into six sections, present a wide variety of interests, approaches, and methodologies, including ideological and theological exegesis, poetic analysis, cultural studies, and semiotics of theater. The first section reviews Dietz's impact on the field of Comedia studies, where he played a critical role in moving the discussion from page to stage. The next two sections explore facets of religious theater, including autos sacramentales and comedias de santos, as well as religious aspects of secular theater. Essays from the other sections explore questions of reading and of staging classical theater, in the original Spanish, in English translation, and in adaptation for the stage and for radio, as well as theoretical and practical approaches to the pedagogy of performance. Specialists and students within and across many disciplines-theater history, comparative performance studies, literary studies-will find this collection both useful and illuminating.

David Gitlitz: Foreword: In the Beginning - Acknowledgments - Susan Paun de García/Donald R. Larson - Matthew D. Stroud: Donald T. Dietz and the Transformation of Comedia Studies - Manuel Delgado Morales: Iluminación divina y luz natural de la razón en el auto y comedia de La vida es sueño - Margaret R. Greer: Manuscript Echoes - A. Robert Lauer: El uso de la silva en el auto sacramental de Calderón: El tesoro escondido - Barbara Mujica: Allegories of Faith: Lope de Vega's Two Extant Plays on Teresa de Ávila - Dakin Matthews: Metatheatricality and Conversion in Lope's Lo fingido verdadero - Susan Paun de García: Staging Mysticism: Cañizares's La más amada de Cristo, Santa Gertrudis la Magna - Isaac Benabu: Teoría y práctica sobre la construcción del héroe trágico en una comedia de asunto bíblico: Los cabellos de Absalón de Calderón - David J. Hildner: Dissimilar Signs of Faith in Calderón's Theater of Intrigue - Sharon D. Voros: Staging Allegory: The Four Virtues in María de San Alberto and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz - Robert M. Johnston: The Dramatic Stagecraft of Calderón: Stage Movement and Proxemic Relations in El alcalde de Zalamea - William R. Blue: Looking Back: Lope's El marido más firme - Donald R. Larson: Staging the Pavane: Dance as Metaphor in El desdén, con el desdén - Valerie Hegstrom/Dale J. Pratt: Mentoring Spanish Theater Performance and Service Learning: The BYU Spanish Golden Age Theater Project's Production of Guillén de Castro's El Narciso en su opinión - Amy R. Williamsen: Performance as Discovery: Questioning Quevedo's Entremeses and Zayas's La traición en la amistad - Susan L. Fischer: Redefining "Boundary Conditions" of Comedia Studies-If Not Now, When?: (Re)emergence of Close Reading and Digital Humanities - Bradley J. Nelson: Calderón's La aurora en Copacabana, a Scandalous Reading - Catherine Larson: Translating Hispanic Women Dramatists in the Twenty-First Century: Are We There Yet? - Bruce R. Burningham: Dogville, Jazz Club Polonia, and the Ethics of Adaptation - Christopher D. Gascón: Abjection and Resistance in El retablo de las maravillas, Visiones de la muerte, and Las cortes de la muerte: Andrés Zambrano's Tres obras cortas del Siglo de Oro (2011) - Christopher B. Weimer: Calderón on the BBC: Radio Translation, Adaptation, and Performance - Edward H. Friedman: Changing for the Better, or Worse: Adapting Juan Ruiz de Alarcón - Contributors - Tabula Gratulatoria - Index.