Majesty and Humanity : Kings and Their Doubles in the Political Drama of the Spanish Golden Age

by Alban K. Forcione

• ISBN13: 9780300134407
• ISBN10: 0300134401
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2009-01-13
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

In the Golden Age of Spanish Theater, an age of highly dramatized coronations and regal spectacles, Alban Forcione has discovered a surprising but persistent preoccupation with the disrobing of the king. In both the celebrations of majesty and the enthrallment with its unveiling, he finds the chilling recesses in which a culture struggled to reconcile the public and the private, society and the individual, the monarch and the man. In brilliantly reinterpreting two of Lope de Vega's plays, long regarded as conventional royalist propaganda, Forcione places his texts in the context of political and institutional history, philosophy, theology, and art history. In so doing he shows how Spanish theater anticipated the decisive changes in human consciousness that characterized the ascendance of the absolutist state and its threat to the cultivation of individuality, authenticity, and humanity.

Author Biography

Alban K. Forcione is Walter S. Carpenter Jr. Professor of the Language, Literature, and Civilization of Spain Emeritus at Princeton University, and Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Emeritus at Columbia University. He lives in Princeton, NJ.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: Removing the Royal Frame: Ghostly Images or Stately Illusions?	p. 1
King and Philosopher: El villano en su rincon	p. 24
King and Warrior: El Rey Don Pedro en Madrid o El Infanzon de Illescas	p. 101
Epilogue: Refractions and Disintegrations of the Majesty: The King as Statesman and Martyr	p. 183
Synopsis of El villano en su rincon	p. 201
Synopsis of El Rey Don Pedro en Madrid o El Infanzon de Illescas	p. 205
Notes	p. 209
Index	p. 279
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