No. 07 (2018)

The Antineutralidad is an anonymous, legal-political treatise in manuscript from 1640, dedicated to the count-duke of Olivares, stored in at least two locations: Brussels and Madrid. A variety of reasons are provided, arguing that it is a mature masterpiece of Diego de Saavedra Fajardo, in cultural significance comparable to the Empresas políticas, his other principal writing.

The symbolism expressed by the colours of the field of the heraldic shield and the armorial coat of the characters in 36 Spanish romances of chivalry (libros de caballerías) printed in the XVIth century is analysed in detail, and the literary chromatic preferences are compared to those observed in real Castilian heraldry composed during the same period and also to those pertaining to previous Arthurian narrative. The correspondence between colours and emotions proposed by the authors of XVth century treatises exerted a determinant influence on the colouring of fiction arms, but scarcely affected that of the authentic ones, excepting the promotion of a definite taste for the green, which was nevertheless devoid of symbolic purposes. The use of chromatic allegories was much wider in the romances of chivalry than in the Arthurian literature, and the choice of colours was generally intended to represent different intentions in each instance.

We analyse both parts of the Lazarillo de Tormes, and extract a corpus of relevant expressions towards a possible attribution of both texts. The principle of this article is to produce a detailed cull instead a broad-spectrum one as used by De la Rosa and Suárez. We conclude that both parts belong to the same author.

Certain poetic and rhetorical criteria are observed in the written productions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spain, adequate to the standards of absolutist court such as ingenuity, judgment, prudence, discretion and honest dissimulation, as is the case of the exemplary novel El coloquio de los perros of Miguel de Cervantes (1613).This article aims to establish homologies that allow me to find the structures that are repeated in a system of representation, whose theological-political principles authorize a satirical discourse.

We present a collection of poems, hitherto unpublished, which has been preserved in a single copy of the early 18th century. It contains abundant and varied lyrical work, as it summarizes the main themes and forms of Baroque lyric, and also anticipates some aspects that decades later will signal the transition to a new literary sensibility. Its author, Francisco Antonio de Castro, although he had published some erudite and religious works, did not take care of his youthful compositions, much more interesting, which were largely collected in this manuscript.

This paper analizes the staging of Calderón de la Barca's autos sacramentales between 1927 and 1939, distinguishing three main tendencies: archeological shows, productions close to avant-garde and propaganda performances. By reviewing the highlights of every one of these approaches to the genre we will get some conclusions about this fast paradigm shift concerning the way theatre professionals, the audience and agents of political field relate to Calderón.

The controversy over the legality or moral legitimacy of the theater will intensify with great virulence from 1682, after the publication of Fray Manuel de Guerra y Ribera’s  Aprobación a la Verdadera Quinta Parte de Comedias de don Pedro Calderón. This extensive document, which far exceeds the ordinary procedure of the compulsory ecclesiastical approval of a work, also defends the legitimacy of the theater and the actors who represent it. In relation to it will appear a series of originality anonymous libels: they have as protagonist a Maria de Navas "comedianta" and first lady of a Court Company for more than thirty years. A relevant member of a social and professional group far removed from the models that Baroque society tried to impose on women, the actress appears as a living incarnation of all the ills of the theater, which so worried her detractors.

This review concerns a book that analyses and publicizes the splendid collection of relaciones de sucesos –printed pamphlets that offer news of particular events– that was put together by Juan Pérez de Guzmán y Boza, Duke of T’Serclaes de Tilly (1852-1934). Its author examines the bibliographical and historical significance of relaciones de sucesos in the second half of the 19th century, and of the Duke of T’Serclaes and his intellectual circle, in particular. The volume offers a catalogue of analytical descriptions of 285 testimonies of editions of short relaciones, in prose and in verse, written in Spanish and printed between 1501 and 1625, both within the Iberian Peninsula and beyond. All the items described are to be found in the three private libraries belonging to those heirs of T’Serclaes to which the author has been able to obtain access. The quality and the interest of this work are greatly increased by the fact that every one of the typobibliographical descriptions is accompanied by full information concerning the history of the transmission and diffusion of the text in question. Thanks to this, the catalogue is in fact an invaluable reference work that supports the study of the forms of production and the distribution of the genre of early printed news pamphlets.

Review of the book Il Novellino de Masuccio Salernitano y su influencia en la literatura española de la Edad de Oro, which analyses the reception and influence of the novels by Masuccio Salernitano on Golden Age Spanish literature.

The importance of the texts edited in the debate on the dignity of painting, its ideological and cultural context and the meaning of the involvement of poets are highlighted.

A review of the new edition and critical apparatus of La cisma de Ingalaterra by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, by the professor and GRISO researcher Juan Manuel Escudero Baztán.

This edition, in the care of Eugenia Fosalba, presents the three different versions of El Abencerraje in a single volume, which allows the reader to consult and assess for themselves the qualities of each one. The oldest version, known as the Chronica, is the one that most closely approximates the original, oral text, written not before 1548. This version, very disdained by critics, left a very useful critical space that the editor has taken advantage of with a critical edition annotated and justified within the modern interpretative coordinates. The second version appeared in the Inventario of Antonio de Villegas, and the third, the most read and disseminated, was inserted at the end of book IV of the Diana de Montemayor (Valladolid edition). The editor tackles in the introductory study the irresolvable problems until the moment of Abencerraje: Who is the author of the Chronica?, what is the textual evolution of the different versions ?, and / or was it Montemayor who signed the inserted version in the Diana? On the authorship of the Chronica, Fosalba points to Jerónimo Jiménez de Urrea, a man of humanistic temperament, military and writer, responsible for the famous translation of Orlando furioso and Arcadia, as the most plausible. About the precedence of the versions is shown how the Chronica is prior to I and D with irrefutable indications such as the erotic notes and the mispronounces included in some passages of C that are scissored in I and D. Finally, an exhaustive collation of the version appeared in the Diana with other works of Montemayor would support the hypothesis that the Portuguese writer is behind the pastoral Abencerraje.