Abstract

This paper analyses the metaphorical language of Cigarrales de Toledo, emphasizing its variety and the presence of saturated semantic fields (economic, legal, medical, funeral, etc.) in unexpected contexts and often associated to the same characters. It evidences an intentional descriptive attention and a frequent use of enumeration, which —adding to metaphors, bisemie, paronomasie, and other various rhetorical figures— enriches the text of details and nuances. Another important element is the repeated habit of quantify all that is told, that is a lure to concreteness and an intentional compensation to the world of images.

Abstract

Spanish Golden Age Culture is an age of secrets and secrecy. Among its playwrights, Pedro Calderón de la Barca shows the most complex comprehension of this subject. During the entirety of his career he refers to it in numerous comedies, creates metaphors concerning different aspects of secrecy and employs it for the construction of his comedias de enredo/comedies of intrigue. In summary: Calderón has an ongoing interest in this anthropological phenomenon. The article analyses the motive of secrecy in selected plays, tragic and comic, starting with the San Secreto figure present in different plays, for example in La vida es sueño. After tracing the temporal aspect of secrecy the article ends with some thoughts about the relation between the public and the secret spheres. Calderón reflects this relation in his masterpiece concerning secrecy: El secreto a voces/The loud secret.