Description:
Professor Kluge’s examination of the Baroque marginalization of tragedy takes off from an analysis of the crucial role played by allegory in central fields of seventeenth-century culture such as political theory, education, mythography, literary criticism, and dramatic theory. The emergence of the term comedia as the generic designation of the drama is presented as intricately intertwined with the allegorical outlook dominating these fields, and, especially, as an effect of the ambiguous re-moralization of aesthetics that is also observable in the period’s famous literary feuds.

The Baroque terminological development must consequently be seen as a central element in the highly equivocal contemporary revitalization of the Christian aesthetic tradition as a countermeasure to cultural decadence. As La vida es sueño shows, the serious comedia is eminently concerned with the transfiguration of the tragic in its various forms of historical pessimism and the ‘tragic view of life’, the moral tragedy of ‘neopagan’ secularism, and, not the least, ancient tragedy as an authoritative art form. However, although tragedy may be marginalized on a terminological level, it is by no means absent from the serious Baroque comedia, which is a tragicomic theatrum mundi rather than a comedy in the Aristotelian sense of the term.


CONTENTS:

List of girures......viii
Acknowlegments......ix
Introduction......1

I. BAROQUE AND ALLEGORY

The Concept of Baroque

History of the Term Baroque......11
Benjamin’s Baroque Study......8
Baroque Allegorization......28
The Struggle with Heresy and Paganism......34
Chronological Contour of the Baroque......40

The History of Allegory

Allegory and Christian Imagery......43
Allegorical Exegesis of Scripture and the Liber Mundi......45
Sensuality and Spirituality Reconciled?......54
Renaissance and Baroque Allegory......59
Allegory and Agudeza......67

Humanism a Lo Divino

Some Elements of the Christian Humanist Worldview......71
Divine Politics. The Theological Critique of Machiavelli......73
The Jesuit Transfiguration of Classical Culture......85
Metamorphoses: Myth Moralized......98
Desengaño and Apotheosis......109

2. RE-STAGING COMEDY

The Literary Republic

Baroque Literary Theory and Criticism......121
The Platonic-Christian Bias......126
Furor Artis......134
Spanish Aristotelianism – Baroque Classicism......138
Desacralization of Allegory? The Gongora-Controversy......146

Dramatic Developments

A Huemaphrodite? The Problem of Tragicomedy......57
The Temple of Evil......169
More Matter, with Less Art: The Concept of Nature......179
Flirting with the Vulgo, Creating the Pueblo......187
Morality, Fiction, and Jouissance. Vindication of Comedy......192

Theatre and Theatricality

The Play’s the Thing: The Spectacle and Baroque Culture......205
Theatrum Mundi......208
Reality and Dream......220
From the Tragedy of History to Divine Comedy......223
Truth a lo humano......228

3. CALDERON

Comedy and Tragedy

Calderonian Comedia. Definitions......239
Baroque Tragedy......242
A Tale Told by an Idiot? The gracioso as Poetological Figure......253
Oedipus Christianus: La vida es sueño......257

Closing Remarks......287
Dansk Resume......295
English Abstract......297
Resumen en ccastellano......299
Bibliography......301