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.