A Companion to Calderón de la Barca

The first comprehensive study of Calderón in English

The first comprehensive study of Calderón in English

Pedro 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 Christiautos) in a variety of styles, Calderón is most famous for his stirringdramas, 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.

ThisCompanion 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 internationalcomedia 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 toLa vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Foreword / Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

IntroductionRoy Norton and Jonathan Thacker
1 Biography and Context Don Cruickshank
2 The Calderonian WorldJeremy Robbins
3 The Playwright's Craft: Calderón and the Great Theatrical World of Early-Modern SpainAlejandro García-Reidy
4La vida es sueño, Jeremy Lawrance
5 The Honour Plays of CalderónColin Thompson
6 Calderón, the ComedianJonathan Thacker
7 Mythological Court Spectacle PlaysMargaret R. Greer
8 Religiouscomedias, Isabel Hernando Morata
9 Calderón's 'Sacramental, Allegorical and Historical'autos, Ignacio Arellano
10 Calderón'sgraciosos, Roy Norton
11 Calderón and Visual ArtOliver Noble Wood
12 The Staging of Calderón's TheatreSantiago Fernández Mosquera
13 Calderón's European Reception from Romanticism to the Twentieth Century Ritchie Robertson
14 The Reception of Calderón in the Hispanic WorldDuncan Wheeler

Appendices
I. Key Digital and Print Sources and Works by Calderón Mentioned
II. Versification in Calderón

Consolidated Bibliography
Index