Abstract

Lope de Vega’s late poem «Ayer vi la librería» appears at first sight to be a laudatory description of King Felipe IV’s personal library. Upon close inspection, and within the broader context of book history in Spain, the poem brings to light a quiet ambivalence about book ownership. This is related at once to Lope’s own disappointments with the Monarchy and the contradictory attitudes to the functions of books in Spain in the XVIIth century.

Abstract

In March 1968, Portuguese censors stopped the broadcast on public television —which was the only television network at the time— of Tirso de Molina’s comedy Las quinas de Portugal. This play stages the most important creation myth for the Portuguese nation: on the eve of the battle of Ourique, a crucified Christ appeared and offered Count Afonso Henriques his five holy wounds as a symbol for the Portuguese coat of arms. In this article, I intend to understand the ethical and political reasoning of the censors who read this play, written by one of the most important playwrights of the Spanish Golden Age

Abstract

«Portuguese matter» is a subject that inspired a large amount of plays of the Spanish Golden Age. This is especially the case in the period of the dual monarchy, in which the outstanding episodes in the history of Portugal and their main protagonists are dealt, in general, from a Castilian-centered perspective. This article specifically focuses on the events involving the dukes of Braganza. These events were of great importance not only for the history of Portugal but for the Austrian monarchy. They also served as the source of a number of comedies of the theatre in the Golden Age. Several of Lope de Vega’s plays are analyzed including El duque de Viseo, El más galán portugués, with the intention of contrasting them with the Granada playwright Cubillo de Aragón’s La tragedia del duque de Berganza. The analysis of the dramatizations evidences the different attitudes of both playwrights towards the house of Braganza. It also evidences the different assessment of Portuguese nobility in relation to the historical circumstances that they experienced during the reign of John II of Portugal. In the case of Lope de Vega, during the same time period as the dual monarchy, the plays are written in order to ennoble his image and, in the case of Cubillo, to validate his reputation as a traitor, following the uprise against the monarchy of Phillip IV, which lead to the secession of Portugal.

Abstract

La figura del portugués en el teatro cómico breve del siglo XVII, y su posterior paso a los villancicos, no ha sido aún estudiada a fondo ni sistematizada, salvo alusiones en estudios de conjunto, junto a otras figuras geográficas y étnicas. En este artículo se procede a un recorrido cronológico por la obra de un nutrido número de entremesistas de la época y del análisis de un corpus de 142 pliegos de villancicos (en su gran mayoría anónimos) para determinar la presencia del personaje, no solo cuantitativamente, sino desde el punto de vista de sus rasgos definitorios. En el entremés es una figura cuya presencia es secundaria pero constante y perfectamente tipificada: sus rasgos más típicos —ya presentes en las farsas del siglo XVI— son su carácter enamoradizo, su arrogancia y su condición de músico, que se ve reforzada en los villancicos, pues el portugués es protagonista en numerosas ocasiones de piezas monologadas, de mayor  componente lírico. Sin embargo, en los villancicos de tipo dialógico mantienen los demás rasgos del personaje, incidiendo en la fanfarronería, en el enamoramiento fácil y en la rivalidad con Castilla, aunque se alude especialmente a la vanidad genealógica del portugués, rasgo apenas perceptible en los entremeses.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship, from an intertextual  perspective, between Las travesuras de la niña mala by Mario Vargas Llosa (2006), and the picaresque genre developed in Spain during the 16th and 17th century. In order to achieve this aim, I will take into account the filiation discourse and the appearance of the picaresque canon, as well as the female picaresque works ignored by the critics. Vargas Llosa draws the character of the «niña mala» gathering charateristics which belong both to male and female picaro.