Projecting Spanishness: The Golden Age Comedia and Film in Spain

Abstract

At a time in which nations are actively debating the politics of belonging in the face of increasingly porous physical and social borders, a process accelerated by globalization, we increasingly see resistance to the perceived threat to national identities in our globalized world. Artistic production and popular culture are two of the many arenas in which we can observe both reactions to this threat and ongoing negotiations of national identities. The case of Spain is certainly no exception, and by examining its cultural production from several moments of Spanish history, this dissertation shows how such a negotiation, in this case of Spanishness, is not a phenomenon unique to the twenty-first century. Through an examination of Spain’s national theater in the early modern period, the Golden Age Comedia, and of subsequent film adaptation of these plays during and since Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, I explore the ways that these plays are used to create and project different narratives of Spain and Spanishness. An examination of the early modern period reveals the ways that the cultural and political heterogeneity of the age—which has been effaced in nostalgic representations of the Golden Age over the centuries—inherently inscribed itself in the Spanish Comedia, resulting in an emphasis on the theme of identity as well as the inherent plasticity of the plays that has contributed to their suitability as continual objects of adaptation. The narratives of Spanishness projected by these film adaptations are subjective and historically contingent, revealing how Spanishness has been subject to continual renegotiation for more than four hundred years. Although more recent television programming featuring early modern biographies and historical fiction suggests that the early modern period continues to participate in contemporary negotiations of Spanishness, this dissertation focuses on feature-length film adaptations intended for theatrical release, the last of which was produced in 2006.