Description
Book SynopsisThis is the first thorough study of Calderón in comparison with other important dramatists of the period. Cascardi studies Calderón's paradoxical engagement with illusion in its philosophical guise as scepticism. He shows on the one hand Calderón's moral will to reject illusion and on the other his theatrical need to embrace it.
Table of ContentsPreface; Acknowledgments; Note on texts and notes; Introduction; 1. La vida es sueno: Calderón's idea of a theatre; 2. La dama duende; 3. Calderón and Tirso: El galán fantasma; 4. El secreto a voces: language and social illusion; 5. Toward tragedy; 6. El médico de su honra; 7. Herod and Hercules: theatrical space and the body; 8. El mágico prodigioso and the theatre of alchemy; 9. The illusions of history; 10. Authority and illusion: En la vida todo es verdad y too mentira; 11. The use of myth: Eco y Narciso; 12. Prometheus and the theatre of the mind; 13. Calderón's last play: the comedia as technology and romance; Notes; Index.
