Abstract

Tragedy was born in Greece and was subsequently claimed and defended in Europe during the Renaissance and Baroque but, this being a gender as orthodox as changeable, it will be necessary to resort to a new reading of its components in order to adapt them to the reality of the Golden Age. Humanism promotes this recovery of the classical world and generates a significant literature on drama precepts that will not develop the same way in all European countries. While Italy and France opt for the acceptance and conversion of the ideas of Aristotle and Horace into style rules, Spain and England cannot fail to point out the dramatic dissonance between stage theory and practice, and, the aim of pleasing the public, will prevail as a benchmark of success over fidelity to the classical precepts. However, despite theoretical differences, the French drama as the English and the Spanish drama will be committed to the development of tragedy. We will discuss some ideas about drama rules in France and England and their connection with what is represented on stage, as well as the nature and intensity of the government’s support to the theatre, in order to contextualize and show the differences with respect to the Spanish Baroque tragedy.

Abstract

The definition of the Calderonian canon is not easy.Three canons are examined in this work: the academic, which recognizes between twenty and thirty titles as central in its production; that of the student (that presumably does not differ much from the unspecialized, cultured public), which is reduced to two or three titles; and the scenic, which distinguishes between a very limited cast of works whose stagings are repeated, and a wider list (close but not the same as that of the academic canon) of those which have only been offered in the past forty years of counted stagings. There remains, moreover, much Calderón to discover.

Abstract

This study analyses the diversity of criteria with which the plays by Calderón were assessed during the first half of the 19th century, and the different classification as canon or model to which his dramatic works were ascribed. We present an explanatory review of the comments to which his works gave rise in order to observe how, when and why they became part of the canon, in what sense they were canonized (poetically, dramatically, ideologically, religiously, morally), and also how that canon was transformed throughout the 19th century. This transformation took place both on the grounds of the evolution of art and of the use of an author who was representative of Spanish literature to justify the respect for national literary tradition based on the acceptance of a sense of poetic and political progress of nations. The article starts by analysing how the poetic imagination of Calderón is granted the category of a national artistic or ethical/religious feature, according to the critics. It continues by studying the approaches that required its aesthetic/political relativization depending on history, and how this fact implies a moral canonization. This, in turn, leads to the conflict between a static canon and a canon which is dynamic as part of history and because of history.

Abstract

El siguiente trabajo examina el uso del término «columnas» como metáfora de las piernas femeninas en la poesía del Siglo de Oro español e hispanoamericano. Partimos de los dos textos más conocidos —un soneto de Francisco de Terrazas («¡Ay, basas de marfil, vivo edificio…») y otro de Lope de Vega («Yo vi, sobre dos piedras plateadas…»—, pero rastreamos también sus posibles fuentesy otros ejemplos posteriores. Relacionamos este uso metafórico con el canon de belleza de la época respecto a las extremidades inferiores de la mujer: pies pequeños, piernas de piel clara y tersa, con formas torneadas y gruesas (especialmente en lo referente a las pantorrillas) que contrastan con las formas delgadas que se preferían para los brazos.