A Companion to Calderón de la Barca (Tamesis Companions)

The first comprehensive study of Calderón in EnglishPedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) is one of the most important dramatists - many would say the single most important dramatist - of the Spanish Golden Age.Spain's dominant and most prestigious playwright for much of the seventeenth century, his work is still regularly staged and translated, influential in more recent times on writers as diverse as Schiller, Shelley and Lorca.The author of around 120 plays (not counting his numerous Corpus Christi autos) in a variety of styles, Calderón is most famous for his stirring dramas, characterized by rhetorically powerful poetry, dramatic structures carefully calibrated to produce poignant echoes, and the fizzing intellectual energy they apply to the age's ontological, eschatological and political preoccupations.His plays succeed in combining these perennial concerns with compelling plots subtle enough to defy definitive interpretation.As this volume seeks to show, however, Calderón's com