El Calderón cómico

01.02.2017

Leitung: Wolfram Aichinger

Projekt ”El Calderón cómico“
Leitung: Wolfram Aichinger
Programmschiene: FWF-Einzelprojekt
Laufzeit: 2017–2021

From 1620 to 1655, Calderón wrote about forty plays whose main objective seems to be entertainment: La banda y la flor, Mejor está que estaba, No hay burlas con el amor, Las manos blancas no ofenden, etc. Either set in Spanish cities or courts of European dukes and countesses, they deal with the follies of young gentlemen and ladies striving for love and marriage. With the exception of La dama duende, these plays are hardly remembered outside Spain.
We would like to engage in a critical reappraisal, utilizing a four step approach: First, we will explore all levels of expression from sound and verse to dialogue, images and figures of speech. We will also look at the indications of staging which Calderón carefully included in the text. Second, we will ask what sets the play in motion and consequently examine the deeper meaning of masquerade, mistaken identities or the multiple perspectives created through mystification and misunderstanding. Third, this will lead to the question, whether comedy implicitly conveys Calderón’s vision of fate and the general status of human life in earthly time. We would finally ascertain the cultural relevance of what comedy states about its main topics: courtship and wedding, even though it seems to deal with these matters in a light-hearted way and in accordance with the conventions of genre. In doing so, we will follow a new path of investigation that aims at a reassessment of comedy’s cultural importance without losing sight of its main function as a trigger of laughter, mirth and entertainment.

Weitere Informationen: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/wolfram.aichinger/php/wordpress/projekteforschung/el-calderon-comico