Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Women's Acts: Plays by Women Dramatists of Spain's Golden Age

Women's Acts: Plays by Women Dramatists of Spain's Golden Age

Soufas, Teresa Scott

Paperback

Play AnthologiesPlays

ISBN10: 0813108896
ISBN13: 9780813108896
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: Nov 27 1996
Pages: 344
Weight: 1.33
Height: 0.77 Width: 7.04 Depth: 10.03
Language: English

Seventeenth-century Spain witnessed a rich flowering of dramatic activity that paralleled the Renaissance stage in other European countries. Yet this Golden Age traditionally has been represented in print almost entirely by male playwrights. With Women's Acts, Teresa Scott Soufas makes available eight plays by five long-neglected women dramatists: Angela de Azevedo, Ana Caro Mallen de Soto, Leonor de la Cueva y Silva, Feliciana Enriquez de Guzman, and Marla de Zayas y Sotomayor.

In an age when moralists denounced women's participation in the public arena, these women transgressed traditional gender ideology by creating works for the secular stage. Female characters in their plays portray the contradictions in their society's expectations for women. Ranging from an empress whose unmarried state distresses her subjects, to a woman who adopts male behavior patterns in courtship, and another who must dress like a man in order to be heard in court, female characters show how difficult it was for women to find fulfillment during a time when their opportunities were limited.

In her introduction, Soufas reviews the development of sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Spanish drama while focusing on the position of women during this period, the significance of these plays, and the issues the playwrights address. Each dramatist's section opens with an overview of the author's life and professional activity, a synopsis of her work(s), and a selected bibliography.

In a modernized edition that is consistent, readable, and suitable for use by both students and scholars, the plays in Women's Acts will at last earn their rightful place in the canon of Renaissance drama.

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