How to cook a cat: Marginal Space in 17th Century Spanish Short Theater

The image of a courtly and cosmopolitan Madrid that enjoyed an intense cultural life, where millions were spent on luxurious festivals that attracted famous artists and travelers, also contained a marginal space, where poor people, the crippled, thieves, soldiers, gamblers, prostitutes, and black people lived and made a living, even cooking cats to survive. Where the long walks along the Prado at sunset lost their gallantry, and became spaces of the night where ruffians challenged each other to duels and ended up, in most cases, in the overpopulated jails of the kingdom. Where the domestic space was transformed into house brothels and gambling dens, full of gamblers and on-lookers. Where in the streets, one didn’t go only to shop but to beg for alms, do cons and rob, or where the churches, a place of knowledge and shelter, became places to hide amorous and clandestine meetings, and where prostitutes, thieves, and murderers hid to escape the law. In this talk I will examine the social meaning of this underworld in 17th century urban Madrid from the perspective of marginality. My interpretation of the urban centers explores baroque Madrid as space of conflict. From this conflict new ways of speaking, living, writing, and reinventing urban landscapes arise. Many of the short pieces that were written in that time articulate their plots through the relationships between marginal society and the established power structures and exhibit social changes in light of the economic processes associated with the development of Madrid as the imperial capital

Autoridad burlesca y modernidad en el teatro breve barroco

The purpose of this article is to study how the trends of diversion and consumption determined the comic elements of the short plays through the analysis of the comic Mayor within the urban space. I focus on several interludes where commerce and the use of new products and habits are the principal means of making fun of the rural authority figure in the emerging new society of consumers in the 17th century.Este artículo estudia la comicidad provocada por las nuevas formas de ocio y consumo en el teatro breve barroco mediante el aprovechamiento dramatúrgico del Alcalde entremesil inserto en el ámbito urbano. Se analizan diversos entremeses donde la comercialización y uso de nuevos productos y hábitos sirven de motivo principal para burlarse de la figura de autoridad rural en la emergente sociedad de consumo del siglo XVII

Burlesque Authority and Modernity in Baroque Short Theater

The purpose of this article is to study how the trends of diversion and consumption determined the comic elements of the short plays through the analysis of the comic Mayor within the urban space. I focus on several interludes where commerce and the use of new products and habits are the principal means of making fun of the rural authority figure in the emerging new society of consumers in the 17th century

Itinerarios urbanos y ajuar doméstico: el “estrado” en «Abrir el ojo», de Rojas Zorrilla

A lo largo del seiscientos, las mujeres adineradas de la España imperial permanecían prácticamente ocultas al mundo exterior. En el interior de sus casas, bajo la autoridad masculina; y en el exterior, cubiertas por velos o en el interior de coches, se mantenían alejadas de toda influencia social. Para mantener la moralidad en sus costumbres, las visitas a las viviendas se llevaban a cabo mediante invitaciones, donde el ‘estrado’ era el centro de reunión. En este trabajo propongo un estudio novedoso del espacio y las prácticas sociales de las casas adineradas del Madrid del diecisiete representadas sobre el tablado en la comedia de Rojas Zorrilla Abrir el ojo, donde las mujeres aparecen cosificadas en un mundo de apariencias, y cautivas del gusto por el veneno de habladurías e insinuaciones

Itinerarios urbanos y ajuar doméstico: el “estrado” en Abrir el ojo, de Rojas Zorrilla

Throughout the 17th century, wealthy Spanish women from Imperial Spain were hidden from the outside world. In their homes, sheltered by masculine guardians; outside, covered with veils or hidden inside carriages, they remained separated from all social influence. In order to maintain morality in their customs, visits to the home were made through invitations, where the ‘estrado’ was the focal point. In this article, I propose an in-depth novel perspective on the social space and practices within the wealthier homes in 17th century Madrid represented on the stage by Roja Zorrilla’s comedia Abrir el ojo, where women were displayed as a commodity within a world of appearances, and where women fell captive to the taste for the poisons of gossip and innuendoes.A lo largo del seiscientos, las mujeres adineradas de la España imperial permanecían prácticamente ocultas al mundo exterior. En el interior de sus casas, bajo la autoridad masculina; y en el exterior, cubiertas por velos o en el interior de coches, se mantenían alejadas de toda influencia social. Para mantener la moralidad en sus costumbres, las visitas a las viviendas se llevaban a cabo mediante invitaciones, donde el ‘estrado’ era el centro de reunión. En este trabajo propongo un estudio novedoso del espacio y las prácticas sociales de las casas adineradas del Madrid del diecisiete representadas sobre el tablado en la comedia de Rojas Zorrilla Abrir el ojo, donde las mujeres aparecen cosificadas en un mundo de apariencias, y cautivas del gusto por el veneno de habladurías e insinuacione

La "cuestión religiosa" en la obra dramática de Pedro Muñoz Seca

The advent of the Second Spanish Republic brought with it a new Constitution whose articles related to the Church and its institutions and provoked a turn in Pedro Munoz Seca�s dramaturgy whose objective was not only directed at making the audience laugh, but also defend his monarch-catholic ideals through a subversive theater close to conservative nuclei. This work focuses on the trajectory of the playwright after the arrival of the Second Republic proposing a study method centered on the plays premiered between 1931 and 1936. To that end, the reactionary component of the plays where the theatrical elements converge with the social, moral and ideological backgrounds of the time will be analyzed and whose consequences forced the playwright�s detention and later execution in the Paracuellos killings.El advenimiento de la II República española trajo consigo una nueva Constitución cuyos artículos concernientes a la Iglesia y sus instituciones provocaron en Pedro Muñoz Seca un giro en su dramaturgia cuyo objetivo no fue únicamente encaminado a desencadenar la hilaridad en el público, sino a defender sus ideales monárquico-católicos mediante un teatro subversivo afín a núcleos conservadores. Este trabajo ahonda en la trayectoria teatral del dramaturgo tras la llegada de la II República proponiendo un modo de estudio centrado en las obras estrenadas entre 1931 y 1936. Para ello se analizará el componente reaccionario de las piezas donde los elementos escénicos convergen con el fondo social, moral e ideológico de las circunstancias del momento y cuyas consecuencias le supusieron al autor su detención y posterior fusilamiento en las matanzas de Paracuellos

Comical Spaces: Material Culture and Social Practices in 17th Century Spanish One-Act Plays

This dissertation is a study of the material cultural and social practices found in Spanish one-act plays whose fictional space was developed in the most important urban centers of 17th century Spain. I focus on how the trends of diversion and consumption determined the comic elements of the plays during that time in the public, domestic, exotic, and marginal spaces. This analysis illuminates the anxieties associated with the behavioral changes provoked by the new habits that emerged in a new society of consumers. The development of consumption in the society of the late Habsburgs was accompanied by a proliferation of novelties and a multiplication of meanings and social practices associated with these objects. The analysis of the one-act plays suggests that goods and each particular space were a mark of social relationships, indicator of a determinate symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1984, 1999) and creator, consequently, of a series of behaviors or everyday practices (De Certeau 1988; Lefebvre, 1991), where one could read a culture’s class structure or power relations from a telling particular artifact or event (Auslander, 1996; Fumerton & Hunt, 1999)