The Adulteress in Spanish Tragedy (1830-1930)

Abstract

Throughout Spain's history, the importance of the male honor code has remained a dominating theme in Spanish literature. For Spanish tragedians, the obsession with the male honor code involves the display of the adulteress on stage. This theatrical convention originated primarily in the Baroque theater of the seventeenth century, but is reiterated continually on the Spanish stage until the 1920s. This dissertation examines the way in which "modern" tragedians implement the Baroque model of the adulteress in order to evoke catharsis in the Spanish spectators and assuage modern anxieties through the repetition of glorified theatrical tradition. The periods included are the height of Spain's belated Romantic period (1833-1840), Noeromanticism and Realism in the late nineteenth century (1870-1895), Miguel de Unamuno's experimental tragedies in the early twentieth century (1898-1910), and the avant-garde break with the Baroque model in the 1920s.