Eclipsed Autonomy: Celestial Images and the Free Will Debate in Antonio Mira de Amescua’s Álvaro de Luna Plays
Antonio Mira de Amescua’s two-part Próspera fortuna and Adversa fortuna de don Álvaro de Luna chronicles the rise and fall of Spain’s most iconic privado, Álvaro de Luna. Suspected by medieval chroniclers of controlling Juan II with magic, Luna’s appearance on stage speaks to growing concerns in seventeenth-century Spain over the king’s ability to resist manipulation by powerful courtiers. Rather than using the plays as political commentary, however, Mira frames the institution of privanza within contemporary debates regarding free will, and, in doing so, offers a dramatic rendering of the nature of human autonomy and spiritual bondage.
Observations on the Dramatic Art of Tirso de Molina
also proved fertile ground for exploration, to the further detriment of the analysis of his drama. Occasionally, critical dicta are advanced, but they are often unconvincing, at times, contradictory. To the despair of the reader, some critics may claim that Tirso's graciosos and his sense of humor are superior to Lope's,' while others are sure that it is in Tirso's figuras del donaire where his excellence is least apparent and that they do not have the traits of "humanidad y poder de invenci6n propio"2 found in Lope's. This point of contention is offered only as an example of a phenomenon which, although not peculiar to the criticism of Tirso, seems enhanced in this case by the confused biography and by either unrestrained praise or consistent denigration of his major achievements. For instance, there is probably no other work of the historical importance of El Burlador de Sevilla that has ever been found so lacking: "La facture en est gauche; I'intrigue confuse, sans suite, coupee sans raison et mal a propos d'incidents et de digressions qui interrompent l'action et la ralentissent sans motif."3 Side by side with censure and misunderstanding, we find also the most unswerving, almost uncritical, devotion in such scholars as Blanca de los Rios or I. L. McClelland. Censure or praise, obviously, will neither erase the imprint left in Spanish culture by Tirso's drama nor explain away its defects. The task before us is rather to find reasons for its persistence and for the misunderstandings of its values. To return to a definite point of contention, it is possible that critics have been talking about different things: one may have had in mind a few graciosos created .at the peak of Tirso's career while another critic may have examined numerous attempts of his years of apprenticeship, when Tirso was not yet able to delineate his characters or to use them effectively in the complex system of a play. For a clearer view of his art, then, we need to trace a line of development from Tirso's beginning to his mastery. It is impossible though to follow play by play, in chronological order, the history of his growth, since, while it is believed that Tirso wrote over three hundred plays, only eightyeight are extant, including a few autos and some plays of doubtful authenticity, and counting separately different versions of the same play. The date of Tirso's birth has recently been established by a document: according to a register of his travel to Santo Domingo, he must have been born in 1583 or 1584.4 He was in his early twenties when he started writing for the theatre. Furthermore we know that Tirso was ordained in
"The Plain Round Tale of Faithful Thady": Castle Rackrent as Slave Narrative
Critics of Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent tend to focus on textual elements—gender issues, the symbolism of the Big House, colonial hegemony— or contextual readings by placing Edgeworth in the Anglo-Irish history and tradition. While such criticism usually in some way examines the main theme of the text, the appropriation of power and authority, little of it accomplishes both the textual and contextual analysis that Castle Rackrent deserves. Exploring Thady’s “plain round tale” as a slave narrative in content and form sheds new light on the work both textually and contextually; in Thady Quirk, Edgeworth has created a typical slave narrator who recounts a history of oppression which is ultimately mediated by an outside editor. As John Cronin writes of Castle Rackrent, “What Maria Edgeworth has given us . . . is a magnificently realised slave, a terrifying vision of the results of colonial misrule. There must have been a moment of clearly deliberate artistic decision in which she realised that what needed to be said must be said through one of the submerged people.”1 The three main textual elements of the narrative indicate its likeness to typical slave narratives: its presentation of a conflicted slave narrator, its use of the framing device of the outside editor, and its narrative structure of episodic anecdotes that utilizes memory, description, and didacticism.