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Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Modern Languages
Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands: Heroic Women Of The Early Reconquest In The Spanish Comedia, Matthew D. Stroud
Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands: Heroic Women Of The Early Reconquest In The Spanish Comedia, Matthew D. Stroud
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
Against the backdrop of the uncertain and troubling history of Christian Spain at the turn of the ninth century, three comedias highlight the heroic deeds of the women of Asturias and León. In Lope de Vega’s Las doncellas de Simancas, women who are to be sent as tribute to the Emir of Córdoba sever their own hands, threaten suicide, and ultimately lead the resistance against the barbaric exchange. In Las famosas asturianas, also by Lope, Sancha, selected, as well, for delivery to the Moors, shames her countrymen by appearing undressed before them but not in the presence of …
Performing Violence In Rotrou’S Theater, Nina Ekstein
Performing Violence In Rotrou’S Theater, Nina Ekstein
Nina C Ekstein
Violence has a significant and varied role in the theater of Jean Rotrou. Discord and strife are natural to the stage and violence is one of the ways such conflict may be expressed. The inherently spectacular nature of violence makes it particularly theatrical. At the same time, violence pleasingly tantalizes audiences. In this examination of Rotrou’s entire theatrical corpus, I first consider the use of “real” violence, both on stage and off. More interesting and even more common is potential violence, which includes threats of all sorts, as well as fortuitous interruptions. Potential violence avoids the serious difficulties that staging …
La Pratique Ironique De L’Appel À L’Autorité Dans Les Péritextes Du Théâtre De Corneille, Nina Ekstein
La Pratique Ironique De L’Appel À L’Autorité Dans Les Péritextes Du Théâtre De Corneille, Nina Ekstein
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
Corneille a lié un grand nombre de péritextes à son œuvre théâtrale, dont les Préfaces, les avis « Au lecteur », les Arguments, les Épîtres, les Examens de 1660 et les Trois Discours sur le poème dramatique de la même année. Ce sont tous des textes polémiques du fait qu’ils représentent des prises de position dans les débats théâtraux de l’époque. Ce sont aussi des défenses souvent très spécifiques de ses œuvres. Les péritextes constituent un terrain particulièrement riche car c’est là qu’un auteur fait connaître ses intentions au lecteur.
Performing Violence In Rotrou’S Theater, Nina Ekstein
Performing Violence In Rotrou’S Theater, Nina Ekstein
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
Violence has a significant and varied role in the theater of Jean Rotrou. Discord and strife are natural to the stage and violence is one of the ways such conflict may be expressed. The inherently spectacular nature of violence makes it particularly theatrical. At the same time, violence pleasingly tantalizes audiences. In this examination of Rotrou’s entire theatrical corpus, I first consider the use of “real” violence, both on stage and off. More interesting and even more common is potential violence, which includes threats of all sorts, as well as fortuitous interruptions. Potential violence avoids the serious difficulties that staging …
The Conversion Of Polyeucte’S Félix: The Problem Of Religion And Theater, Nina Ekstein
The Conversion Of Polyeucte’S Félix: The Problem Of Religion And Theater, Nina Ekstein
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
The relationship between religion and theater gave rise in seventeenth-century France to much discussion and dissent, commonly referred to as the Querelle de la moralité du théâtre. The 1640s were a rare period during which religious subjects were popular on the French stage; almost all of the major playwrights wrote at least one play that could be thus categorized (Pasquier 201). I propose to examine the friction between the domains of theater and religion through a discussion of the two most enduringly famous religious plays of this period, Pierre Corneille's Polyeucte (1643) and Jean Rotrou's Le Véritable Saint Genest …
The Play Of Means And Ends: Justice In Lope's Fuenteovejuna, Matthew D. Stroud
The Play Of Means And Ends: Justice In Lope's Fuenteovejuna, Matthew D. Stroud
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
Lope’s masterpiece, Fuenteovejuna, is generally considered to be a glowing endorsement of the reign of Fernando and Isabel, who represent not just a glorious and hopeful Spanish history but political acumen, justice, and the triumph of good over evil. A closer examination of several key plot elements, however, reveals that almost every time characters are called upon to make decisions, they choose the option that at best circumvents the requirements for justice and at worst actively works to the detriment of the proper administration of justice and law. This study focuses on four pivotal moments—when Frondoso takes the Comendador’s …
Defining The Comedia: On Generalizations Once Widely Accepted That Are No Longer Accepted So Widely, Matthew D. Stroud
Defining The Comedia: On Generalizations Once Widely Accepted That Are No Longer Accepted So Widely, Matthew D. Stroud
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
Defining the comedia is a challenge that is rarely addressed directly in the pages of the Bulletin of the Comediantes. Those of us who spend our professional lives working with the plays that are brought together under this cover term have a visceral or intuitive understanding of what falls into the category of comedia and what lies outside of it. We are hardly exempt from having to articulate our definitions in concrete terms, however, because students, colleagues, and organizations to whom we write grants all want us to establish the limits, scope, and parameters of our field of study. …
The Odd Man Out: The Kings In Corneille's Machine Plays, Nina Ekstein
The Odd Man Out: The Kings In Corneille's Machine Plays, Nina Ekstein
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
Andromède and La Conquête de la Toison d’or have a largely unenviable status in Corneille’s oeuvre. They are often either dismissed or marginalized, and almost inevitably read as different from, and therefore inferior to, the more canonical Cornelian works. In fact, both plays are richer and more interesting than commonly thought, as I hope to suggest by an examination of the curious and curiously similar role of the king.
Corneille's Absent Characters, Nina Ekstein
Corneille's Absent Characters, Nina Ekstein
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
The relationship between presence and absence in theater is intertwined and complex. For Kibédi Varga, a work of art invariably signifies absence in that it proposes an image, a representation, rather than the thing itself (341-42). This is obviously true of theater. At the same time, theater is essentially about presence. The empty stage is a space that derives its potential for force and meaning from the expectation of live bodies engaged in concrete actions there. Perhaps more to the point, theater is about the dialectical relationship between absence and presence. According to Fuchs, "theatre is ever the presence of …
Metaphors Of Mathematics In Corneille's Theater, Nina Ekstein
Metaphors Of Mathematics In Corneille's Theater, Nina Ekstein
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
Mathematical metaphors are a distinctive and characteristic feature of Corneille’s theater, closely tied to his dramatic aesthetics. I divide these metaphors into two groups, identities and combinatorics. The field of identities deals with different kinds of equations, from the level of language, where elements are equated or placed in some other relationship that can be expressed mathematically, to the level of plot, where, for example, the search for identity (e.g. who is Héraclius?) resembles an algebraic equation. Combinatorics involves the arrangements and combinations of elements, and finds its greatest application here in the question of the constitution of couples to …
Le Change In Corneille And Racine, Nina Ekstein
Le Change In Corneille And Racine, Nina Ekstein
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
Le Change is a concept typically associated in the seventeenth century with the baroque, with the pastoral, and with comedy. In the simplest terms, a lover abandons the object of his or her affections for another. In baroque aesthetics, change is linked to the larger concepts of mobility and metamorphosis (Rousset 44). It is a common motif in the pastoral as well, both in drama and prose fiction. The classic pastoral figure of change is Hylas from Honoré d'Urfé's Astrée, who moves cavalierly from one mistress to the next. Invariably in seventeenth-century France, change is held to be a …
Le Défi Théâtral Dans Antigone De Félix Morisseau-Leroy Et La Tragédie Du Roi Christophe D'Aimé Césaire, Marie-Denise Shelton
Le Défi Théâtral Dans Antigone De Félix Morisseau-Leroy Et La Tragédie Du Roi Christophe D'Aimé Césaire, Marie-Denise Shelton
CMC Faculty Publications and Research
No abstract provided.
Staging The Tyrant On The Seventeenth-Century French Stage, Nina Ekstein
Staging The Tyrant On The Seventeenth-Century French Stage, Nina Ekstein
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
The tyrant is a frequent figure of seventeenth-century theater. While not as ubiquitous as young lovers, fathers, or kings, the tyrant is a persistent subset of this last group throughout the period. Like so many elements of seventeenth-century theater, the tyrant has it origins in antiquity, both in terms of political theory and drama. Tyrants first appeared on the stage of fifth-century Athens, and the legends and histories of the tyrants of antiquity are often repeated on the French stage of the seventeenth century, from Hérode sending Marianne to her death, to Brute assassinating César, to Néron eliminating his rival …
Appropriation And Gender: The Case Of Catherine Bernard And Bernard De Fontenelle, Nina Ekstein
Appropriation And Gender: The Case Of Catherine Bernard And Bernard De Fontenelle, Nina Ekstein
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
In 1757, Bernard de Bavier de Fontenelle, the well-known popularizer of scientific thinking, homme de lettres, and secretary of the Académie des Sciences, died just months shy of his hundredth birthday. In 1758, Volume 10 of Fontenelle's Oeuvres appeared, edited by Fontenelle's chosen literary executor, the abbé Trublet. Along with a number of other works, Volume 10 contains a tragedy dating from 1690 entitled Brutus. This play has had a complex and curious history. The year 1758 marks the first time that Brutus appears under Fontenelle's name, but hardly the last. In 1690, when the play was first …
Language, Power, And Gender In Tristan’S La Marianne And La Mort De Sénèque, Nina Ekstein
Language, Power, And Gender In Tristan’S La Marianne And La Mort De Sénèque, Nina Ekstein
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
Power is a central issue in both Tristan L'Hermite's Marianne (1636) and La Mort de Sénèque (1644). I propose to examine the articulations of power in Tristan's theater and the power struggles at the heart of both plays. On the most basic level, Tristan illustrates the power of tyranny. Furetière defines a tyrant as an "usurpateur d'un Etat, oppresseur de la liberté publique, qui s'est emparé par violence ou par adresse de la souveraine puissance"; tyran "se dit aussi d'un Prince qui abuse de son pouvoir, qui ne gouverne pas selon les lois, qui use de violence et de cruauté …
Further Considerations Of History And Law In The Wife-Murder "Comedias", Matthew D. Stroud
Further Considerations Of History And Law In The Wife-Murder "Comedias", Matthew D. Stroud
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
Those who, like Américo Castro and Arnold Reichenberger, assume a great similarity between historical fact and dramatic action, use literary texts to posit speculations about historical fact and historical fact to assert the realism of literary situations. Despite the potential tautology inherent in such arguments, these scholars have attempted to prove their cases by bringing to bear the following evidence: 1) real wife murders documented in Spanish history; 2) laws regarding the punishment of an adulterous wife 3) Spanish social history and the formation of a national Spanish personality; 4) contemporary concepts of honor, some fictional and some didactic, that …
The Comedia As Potboiler: Juan De Cabeza’S Matar Por Zelos Su Dama, Matthew D. Stroud
The Comedia As Potboiler: Juan De Cabeza’S Matar Por Zelos Su Dama, Matthew D. Stroud
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
Of the hundreds of existing comedias, only a very small percentage has actually received critical attention. Those few that have been studied in greatest depth, such as La vida es sueño, El burlador de Sevilla, Fuenteovejuna, and the like, might be said to represent the most interesting, if not the best, plays in the entire body of comedias.1 Nevertheless, for every famous comedia, there are literally scores of lesser known and never read plays. Perhaps their lack of attention is mute testimony to their mediocrity, but they are nonetheless comedias and are of critical interest …
Stylistic Considerations Of Calderón’S Opera Librettos, Matthew D. Stroud
Stylistic Considerations Of Calderón’S Opera Librettos, Matthew D. Stroud
Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research
The two plays of Calderón that were set to music in their entirety have a number of common characteristics beyond those associated with the mythological plays as a whole. Both of the plays were performed in 1660, La púrpura de la rosa on January 17 to celebrate the marriage of the Infanta María Teresa to Louis XIV of France, and Celos aun del aire matan on December 5 to celebrate the third birthday of the Infante Felipe Próspero. Presented in the Palacio del Buen Retiro, set to music by Juan Hidalgo, staged with the appropriate elaborate machinery, and performed by …