A. Robert Lauer – författare

Al considerar el papel hegemonico que la Espana del siglo XVII ejercio en la peninsula italiana, un estudio del Barroco espanol no puede estar completo sin tener en cuenta su contraparte italiana. Marcella Salvi propone una nueva aproximacion al estudio del teatro barroco espanol examinando el centro (Espana) desde su periferia politico-cultural (Italia). Escenas en conflicto ilustra la relacion entre centro y periferia a traves de las perspectivas de personajes marginales como criados, embusteros de la calle, prostitutas, bufones y soldados mercenarios. Se analizan tres aspectos especificos del teatro barroco: el meta-teatro, la presencia de la mujer y la politica imperial.

Amistades peligrosas examina el discurso homoerotico que subyace a varias comedias de Lope de Vega y ofrece un contexto historico, sociologico y legal de la homosexualidad en la epoca del genial dramaturgo a partir de la correspondencia epistolar de este con su mecenas, el duque de Sessa. Se analiza la figura del monstruo que utiliza Lope en La prueba de los ingenios (1617) para codificar la relacion homoerotica entre las dos protagonistas, Laura y Florela. Esta comedia funciona ademas como metafora del espacio teatral que Lope establece con su revolucionario Arte nuevo de hacer comedias. En La boda entre dos maridos (1595-1601), Lope lleva el topico (neo)platonico de la amistad ideal entre dos hombres, Lauro y Febo, a los extremos de una relacion homoerotica. En El meson de la corte (1588-1595), la protagonista vestida de hombre para restaurar su honor provoca una serie de confusiones de tinte sexual que desafian las premisas fundamentales de la sociedad patriarcal. En conclusion, mediante una comedia nacida de los gustos y necesidades de su tiempo, Lope plantea un discurso repleto tanto de lo oficial como de lo prohibido, de lo canonico y lo revolucionario.Ese tercer espacio creado por Lope se ha revelado con el paso de los siglos como un discurso visionario que anticipaba los adelantos contemporaneos en la lucha por la igualdad de sexos y sexualidades.

This text examines the character of Don Quixote, the book describing his fictional exploits, and their implications in the theological realm as well as in the fictive, using Gónzalez and Maldonado’s definition of theology as "la explicación de la realidad cósmica" ["the explanation of cosmic reality"], including the identity and nature of God. The first chapter examines the implications of the basin-helmet in El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de La Mancha, in context with the historical and theological developments of the end of the sixteenth century. The second chapter looks first at the religious climate of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in Spain and the rest of Europe to tease-out the theological and ecclesiastical preoccupations that undergird much of the content in Don Quixote. The third chapter examines a few details from the life of Miguel de Cervantes in order to place him within the historical and literary context examined in the second chapter, and the fourth chapter examines chivalry as a mode of religious life. The fifth chapter then approaches various other characters, events, and discussions in the novel that carry religious content, and the sixth considers transformation, transubstantiation, and translation, using the topos of the baciyelmo as a metaphor for Cervantes.

From 1890 to 1945, Europe was shaken by political, social, and cultural revolutions brought about by the crisis of modernity. Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud stoked the yearnings of a convulsed era, devastated by the First World War. It was a time when all kinds of alternative and radical models of modernity were erected in pursuit of a new world: from the exasperation of communist and fascist totalitarianism to the frenzy of the artistic avant-gardes and biopolitics.Hungry for transcendence and tormented by hope, this passionate age also gave rise in Europe to a Catholic revival in literature. Writers such as G. K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene in England; Charles Péguy, Paul Claudel, and Georges Bernanos in France; and Ramiro de Maeztu and José Bergamín in Spain found that Catholicism was the key to coping with the enigmas and paradoxes of modern man. At the same time, by injecting the political and artistic principles of modernity into the Christian tradition, they transformed a reactionary Catholicism into the paradigm of ultramodernity.This book explores the intellectual history of a European cultural phenomenon that has thus far been left out of most works of criticism, despite its magnitude. Moreover, it does so through vibrant prose that makes this work of research read like a novel.