Abstract

The present article analyzes the scenic and dramatic functions of the Sun-King myth. A number of uses of the myth within texts of praise of the Habsburg monarchy are employed to extrapolate possible uses within court theatre. The article uses the Aristotelian analytic differentiation between ergon and parergon and exemplifies it in the loa at the beginning of Calderón’s Fieras afemina amor. This loa makes use of the Sun-King myth to perform the theatrical praise of Mariana de Austria on the stage, at court and within the entire cosmos.

Abstract

The aim of this investigation is the study of publicity from the point of view of the archetypes, following a hermeneutic model of analysis of the content; through this we have studied the presence of the Greek mythological figures in comparison with the characters that appear in the advertising messages of perfumes, which at first allows us to observe the analogy of the gods of the old Greek Mythology with real human archetypes; secondly, it allows us to dig deeper into these advertising contents to know if these stories are purely commercial or if they could be interpreted with other meanings. The results of this analysis show a high participation of the female archetype of the woman as a wife, related to the goddess Hera, and followed by the archetype of the sensuality represented by the Aphrodite goddess and that of the goddess Artemisia or goddess of liberty; in perfume commercials aimed at men, the biggest frequency in the myth of Zeus and of Narcissus is emphasized, as archetypes of power and success, continued by the presence of the myth of Odysseus, the hero’s archetype, known as a model of strategist and intelligence; in commercials aimed at both sexes the myth of Dionysus as archetype of the party and transformation is the most relevant, followed by the myth of the brothers Hera-Zeus that become husbands and fathers of the Greek Panteon of Mithological Gods.

Abstract

The well-known Sonnet XIII by Garcilaso de la Vega «A Dafne ya los brazos le crecían» was to establish the disconsolate figure of Apollo, pining for the loss of Daphne, as the literary paradigm of the pangs of love —at least in Renaissance literature in the Iberian peninsula. Thus, a century later, Francesc Fontanella revisited the Garcilaso sonnet and carried out a profoundly Baroque re-reading. The Catalan text ‘transforms’ the symmetry and order in which the Spanish sonnet describes the metamorphosis of the nymph into an inseparable amalgam between the old way of being and the new reality, between the human and the plant, and freezes the figure in mutation: neither the original form nor the results of the process are as interesting as the mutation itself, an idea that conforms to Baroque sensitivities of the aesthetics of transformation. At the same time, the essentially sensory terms of the Renaissance text are transmuted, in the Catalan sonnet, into emotional, human characteristics; the Baroque poet emphasizes Daphne’s intentionality regarding her (almost self-)transformation, and attributes to her an extraordinary willfulness, contrary to Apollo, which is, in the end, to no avail. Finally, Fontanella’s elegiac text breaks with the secular expectations typical of Renaissance sonnets as an emblem of love’s misfortune and instead, rises above them based on the literaturization of the biographical experience.

Abstract

This article emphasizes the decisive role played by Antoni de Bofarull and Víctor Balaguer in constructing the ideas and imagery which would feed Catalanist thought as well as their role in creating a Catalan national mythology. The analysis centres on the activities of these two writers from the 1840s to the 1860s, which fostered a better understanding among Catalans of their own history and which, above all, provided the foundation on which Catalonia could be characterized as an intrinsically democratic country. This said, they also gave importance to Catalan medieval institutions (and to those who defended them when any king tried to devalue them) as well as justifying the rebellious character of the Catalans. This can be seen in revolts against injustice and absolutism such as the war with John II, the Segadors war, and the War of the Spanish Succession, as well as in phenomena such as banditry.