Sign-In
Cart
Audiences of Empire: Lope de Vega, the Spanish History Play, and Me
Hardcover
Entertainment & Performing ArtsBiographies GeneralPlays
Publisher Price: $30.95
ISBN13: 9781450285148
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: Mar 15 2011
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.27
Height: 0.81 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
LOPE DE VEGA (1562-1635), poet/playwright of unrivaled popularity during Spain's Golden Age of literature (including Miguel de Cervantes and Calderón de la Barca), rescued theater from ineffective conventions and claimed authorship of some 1800 titles. Many of the almost 500 existing plays are stagings of pivotal events and protagonists from national history. Lope entertains his eager public with colorful stories of the passions, heroism and villainy of the high and mighty blending these with the virtues and vices of ordinary folk and stock characters. In the twilight of the once great empire, now powerless and bankrupt, Lope draws his audience into a reimagined past that is confirmed and redeemed by a prophecy of future greatness. With the history play Lope gives new meaning to the moniker often ascribed to him, Phoenix of Spain.
In Audiences of Empire, author Elaine Bunn proposes a new subgenre, the populist national history play that is communal and deliberately expansive. She shows Lope, the frustrated historian, connecting king to commoner and putting myths, legends and miracles to fresh use.
Finally, Audiences of Empire includes a personal reminiscence by the author about the challenges of the writing process and her experience as a feminist academic in a slowly transforming patriarchal university system. Her protracted research on Lope's early theater makes her aware finally of the significance of her own historical moment with surprising insights.
Also in
Plays
Four Comedies: The Taming of the Shrew, a Midsummer Night's Dream, the Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night
Shakespeare, William
Paperback
The Major Plays: Ivanov, the Sea Gull, Uncle Vanya, the Three Sisters, the Cherry Orchard
Chekhov, Anton
Paperback
Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem
Miller, Arthur
Paperback
The Greek Tragedies: Seventeen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
Aeschylus
Sophocles
Euripides
Paperback
The Laramie Project and the Laramie Project: Ten Years Later
Kaufman, Moises
Fondakowski, Leigh
Pierotti, Greg
Paperback
FRANKENSTEIN or The Modern Prometheus (The Revised 1831 Edition - Wisehouse Classics)
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paperback
Four Major Plays: A Doll's House/Ghosts/Hedda Gabler/The Master Builder
McFarlane, James
Arup, Jens
Ibsen, Henrik
Paperback
A Doll's House and Other Plays: With Pillars of the Community, Ghosts and an Enemy of the People
Ibsen, Henrik
Paperback
KJV, Pew Bible, Large Print, Hardcover, Burgundy, Red Letter Edition (Large Print Edition)
Thomas Nelson
Hardcover
Our Town and the Cosmic One-Acts: The Long Christmas Dinner, the Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, and Pullman Car Hiawatha
Wilder, Thornton
Paperback
Five Plays: Ivanov, the Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and the Cherry Orchard
Chekhov, Anton
Hingley, Ronald
Paperback