the first time that these sonnets have been brought together in one book translations that are not just accurate guides to the meaning of the originals but also enjoyable sonnets in their own right Offers detailed and incisive critical commentary on each of the poems; a complete and readable introduction.

The central component of this study is an index of the numerous motifs through which topoi of the text as symbol are articulated in the religious poetry, sermons, and sacramental plays of Golden Age Spain. Paired with the index is an anthology of the texts on which the book is based. In her introduction, Louise Salstad discusses the transmission and transformation of the topoi as they appear in the Old and New Testaments, classical literature, church writings, and medieval texts, and she considers the influence of the contemporary milieu on the shaping of these motifs. The book also includes an explanatory introduction to the index, biographical notes on authors, a chronology of works, a bibliography, and key word indexes of motifs in English and Spanish. The most extensive investigation of specific topoi undertaken in Spanish studies, this book will also be of interest to art historians and cultural historians whose focus is theology, the history of spirituality, or the history of the book.

The Spanish Renaissance--a period of glory that endured from the late 15th century through the 17th century--comes to life in 40 of its greatest poems collected in this remarkable new translation, rendered with passionate fervor and a stylistic brilliance.

This collection of original new essays focuses on the many ways in which early modern Spanish plays engaged their audiences in a dialogue about abuse, injustice, and inequality. Far from the traditional monolithic view of theatrical works as tools for expanding ideology, these essays each recognize the power of theatre in reflecting on issues related to social justice. The first section of the book focuses on textual analysis, taking into account legal, feminist, and collective bargaining theory. The second section explores issues surrounding theatricality, performativity, and intellectual property laws through an analysis of contemporary adaptations. The final section reflects on social justice from the practitioners’ point of view, including actors and directors. Social Justice in Spanish Golden Age Theatre reveals how adaptations of classical theatre portray social justice and how throughout history the writing and staging of comedias has been at the service of a wide range of political agendas.

Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was in the throes of modernization arising from trade with the New World and the rise of an urban society. During this period, Spanish culture came to be dominated by the tension between an old regime of traditional values&—honor, lineage, purity of blood&—and these modernizing influences. Anthony J. Cascardi examines the literature of the Golden Age as the point at which tensions between the old and the new converged and proposes that this historical drama provided the context for subject-formation in early modern Spain. He examines how Spanish writers envisioned history and studies how these visions revealed or concealed contradictions between social values of their time, particularly between the value systems of caste and class. Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age draws on recent theoretical paradigms in contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis, political and social theory, and literary history to place Spain's major literary figures in challenging new contexts. By accounting for both modernizing desires and resistances to modernization, Cascardi provides readers interested in theories of ideology and history with a new way of looking at the literature of the Spanish Golden Age.

This is the first monograph on the performance and reception of sixteenth- and seventeenth- century national drama in contemporary Spain, which attempts to remedy the traditional absence of performance-based approaches in Golden Age studies. The book contextualises the socio-historical background to the modern-day performance of the country’s three major Spanish baroque playwrights (Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina), whilst also providing detailed aesthetic analyses of individual stage and screen adaptations.