Sobre el papel de Lope de Vega en la construcción del relato nacional del clasicismo francés

This essay deals with an aspect of the formation process of the image of the Spanish Baroque theatre in France as an irregular and chaotic aesthetic form, which was also considered inferior with respect to the French classical model. In this theoretical construction, Lope de Vega embodies all of the Spanish theatre's flaws and, more generally, Hispanic literature's ones, in turn conceived as an expression of the Spanish nation’s spirit. This process of elaborating an image of an author at the service of the invention of a national stereotype is possible thanks to the early reception of some prose works by Lope (La Arcadia, El peregrino en su patria) which are enjoying a widespread diffusion in their translations. In a context marked by controversy surrounding the tragi-comédie, assimilated by his detractors to a simple theatrical deformation of novelistic material, Lope de Vega assumes the function of representative of a literature considered extraneous to any rule and to the separation between literary genres.

Le gare d’amicizia e d’amore de Arcangelo Spagna: una posible refundición de Duelo de honor y amistad

This work aims to examine the adaptations of the ‘comedia nueva’ by Arcangelo Spagna, a Roman clergyman who lived and worked between the end of the XVII century and the first decades of the following one. In particular, we will try to verify the relationship between Spagna’s comedy Le gare d’amicitia e d’amore and Herrera y Sotomayor’s Duelo de honor y amistad, by examining the analogies and the differences related to this possible hypotext.

Armidoro, Oristeo e altri principi giardinieri sulle scene dell’opera veneziana nel Seicento

The subject of aprince dressing as a gardener to approach his beloved is dear to the European theatrical tradition: the model of Don Duardos by Gil Vicente (1562), reprinted in El rincipe viñador by Luis Vélez de Guevara (1668), is also used in French theatre, which proposes a variation in Le Prince déguisé by Georges de Scudery (1636), partly based on the novel Grisel y Mirabella by Juan de Flores (1524). This subject was later integrated into 17th century Italian theatre, starting with Venetian opera. This essay analyses in particular some works produced in Venice in the middle of the century, starting with Il prencipe giardiniero by Benedetto Ferrari (1644), whose subject anticipates first L’Oristeo (1651) by Giovanni Faustini and Francesco Cavalli, and Laurindo by Gio. Andrea Moniglia, written in 1657 and printed as Il principe giardiniere under the name of Giacinto Andrea Cicognini starting from 1664.

El teatro del Siglo de Oro y su paulatina presencia en la cultura y la literatura teatrales en los países de habla alemana durante los siglos XVII y XVIII

The presence of the theatre of the Spanish Siglo de Oro in the theatre and literary culture of Germany (or the German-speaking countries) in the 17th and 18th centuries is a multifaceted one, and was influenced by many factors. We have to take in account that in the second half of the 17th century and in a large part of the 18th century Spain had been a terra incognita for the Germanic world. This long lack of basic knowledge led to a decontextualization of the Golden Age theatre and sometimes to an unconditional enthusiasm that was not based on historical realities. The protagonists of the ‘construction’ of a ‘Spanish national theatre’ included Lessing, Herder, Goethe, the Schlegel brothers and the philosopher Schelling, the most prominent German intellectuals of the time. Within this ‘construction’ Lope de Vega, Rojas Zorrilla and, above all, Calderón de la Barca are the three icons that will guide both the theory and the practice of drama during the ‘two most Spanish decades’ of German literary history (1790-1810), even reaching - in the secularized world of the classics and the first generation of German Romantics - the ‘deification’ of Calderón as perfect poet and author of modern tragedies (without paying much attention to his comedias in a stricter sense and without taking account of his autos sacramentales).

Dal Desdén di Moreto ai Plaisirs di Molière

In 1664 Molière and his troupe played in the gardens of Versailles, in front of the Sun King, La Princesse d'Elide a rewriting of the Desdén con el Desdén by Moreto. As Maria Grazia Profeti pointed out in her writings, Genette's analysis still allows, after some time from the critical works of the critic, to avoid the ever-present and threatening obstacles of moral, formal or aesthetic value judgements accompanied by the more or less declared idea of superiority or inferiority of an author or a culture and dramaturgy. Entering the Molierian laboratory, after having highlighted how much the French hypertext owes to its Spanish hypotext, the essay tries to recontextualize the pièce within the Royal Festivals of the Plaisirs de île enchantée also in the light of the reception of contemporaries: wearing virtually the spectacles of a spectator of the time, and taking into consideration the transvalorizations carried out by the French playwright, he also tries to grasp the meaning that the Molierian play may have assumed for the Sovereign and the public in the context of the political and sentimental biography of the King of France at that chronological height.

Da La celosa de sí misma di Tirso a La gelosa di se stessa, melodramma di Arcangelo Spagna

La gelosa di se stessa is the fourth of the six melodramas collected in 1709 by Arcangelo Spagna and published in Rome (Domenico Antonio Ercole), as the third volume of his librettos, but its writing dates back to at least 1689, the date of a previous printed edition, shortly after the opera appeared on stage, a few months before at the palace at the Quattro Fontane of the Prince of Palestrina. It is not to be excluded, however, and this is dealt with in the first pages of this essay, the existence of still earlier editions, especially if we compare the two printed texts, already very divergent between them, and the two manuscripts, both at the Vatican Apostolic Library, to which the manuscript of the score must certainly be added for further problematization. The second section of this paper gets to the heart of the theme that interests us most here, namely the examination of Spagna’s adaptive interventions with respect to what undoubtedly represents its main hypotext, Tirso de Molina’s La celosa de sí misma. The analysis is conducted on the latest printed edition of the melodrama, to be considered as the version that the author wanted to pass on to posterity, as the authorized literary text, still intervening much compared to the previous edition of 1689 on which perhaps, being more linked to the stage event, he hadn’t had much control.

Gli Avis au lecteur delle comédies (e tragi-comédies) à l’espagnole: spunti per la definizione di un nuovo genere?

It is well known that in France the Spanish comedy is not considered a model to be imitated, yet, reading the peritexts (dédicace, avis au lecteur, épître) of the 17th Century French adapters and comparing the imitations with the sources, we can see attitudes that are not always connected to preconceived ideas about the superiority of génie français, both in the consideration that the playwrights reveal towards contemporary Spanish plays, and in their way of adapting them. After outlining the duration and extent of the phenomenon of the seventeenth-century comédie à l'espagnole, the study analyzes the pièces and the peritexts, following two paths: the first investigates the real knowledge and opinion that the French dramatists had of Spanish dramaturgy; the second reconstructs and analyzes the translation methods that, in their forewords, the adapters claim they want to use to make Spanish theatrical texts usable in France, and which they often disregard in their pièces.

Il principe selvaggio (1695) de Francesco Silvani: una curiosa taracea de motivos del teatro áureo español

In this paper, I intend to find out which texts inspired the libretto by Francesco Silvani, Il principe selvaggio (1695), whose events, according to the author, are taken "from the Fasti of Castile". The examination of the plot leads to exclude the existence of a historiographic "source" as the mention of the Fasti would suggest, and to hypothesize instead a multiple literary intertextuality. It seems that Silvani was reminiscent of theatrical texts such as El príncipe de los montes, by Juan Pérez de Montalbán, Virtudes vencen señales, by Luis Vélez de Guevara, and a constellation of works by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (El monstruo de los jardines, La hija del aire, Hado y divisa de Leonido y de Marfisa).

L’ombra di Don Juan Tenorio sulla scena barocca partenopea: indizi d’archivio e canoni drammaturgici

This paper highlights archival evidence and dramaturgic mythemes in order to reconsider the historiographical issues related to the XVIIth-century theatrical reception of El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra outside of Spain. Among the crossroads of theatrical practices alive in XVIIth-century Naples, Don Juan underwent a rapid process of assimilation and transformation. The chronology of its Neapolitan debut at the Teatro di San Bartolomeo is re-examined in this paper, while unfolding some new and possible scenarios interweaving history and dramaturgy, the stage and the historical political events of the Kingdom of Naples during the first decades of the XVIIth century. This study examines the Mediterranean basis consolidating the myth of Don Juan – the character with «feet made of wind» (Garboli) – and defining its dramaturgic status all around Europe.

L’amorose furie d’Orlando de Giacinto Andrea Cicognini y el teatro de abolengo ariostesco de Lope de Vega: una cuestión crítica pendiente

In order to highlight the intertextual game that Giacinto Andrea Cicognini creates in it L’amorose furie d’Orlando with Angélica en el Catay by Lope de Vega, a hypothesis vented but not demonstrated by Gobbi in an ancient critical essay, it is necessary to read and reread the two comedies without losing sight of the octaves of Ariosto with a meticulousness that, until now, no one had believed necessary to put in place, perhaps because in both cases we are not faced with absolute masterpieces. In any case, if it is true that certain images and phrases can fall into the category of literary interdiscursiveness, which goes beyond the two plays analyzed, the fact remains that the numerous similarities identified cannot be the result of chance.