Abstract

In baroques labyrinths it get consumed the perverse pleasure of artificious complexity, the enthusiasm for a virtual architecture able to metaphorise the endless trajectories of an inextricable universe. One of the evidents signs of neo-baroque crisis in Borges’s poetics is, without doubts, the presence of labyrinth’s geometrical metaphors. Also Escher, through his graphics representations of the unestable equilibrium between illusion and disillusion, between decryption and ontological doubt, between figures possibles and impossibles, ends enrolling himself in the scope of neo-baroque crisis.

Abstract

The present article analyses the description of prisons within Calderon’s work, parting from a main distinction between real prisons, where the characters are retained before they are executed, and metaphorical ones, which serve to limit people’s reasoning. Firstly, some elements are identified to explain why some enclosures are chosen to restrain people’s freedom, such as urgency, location and, exposure to public. Then, there has been established a typology of these places, followed by their characterization. It can be concluded that playwrights pay little attention to this subject, which has led me to reflect on the genre itself as it was seen at that time. In an action genre such as this, description lacks importance, since the emphasis is on the farce element in the Baroque theatre. The insistent presence of this phenomenon in this Calderon responds to his worry for man’s freedom.