Don W. Cruickshank - Böcker

Don Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-81) is Spain's most important early modern dramatist. His varied career as a playwright, courtier, soldier and priest placed him at the heart of Spanish culture, and he reflected on contemporary events in his plays, most famously La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream). In this scholarly biography of Calderón in English, Don Cruickshank uses his command of the archival sources and his unparalleled understanding of Calderón's work to chart his life and his political, literary and religious contexts. In addition, the book includes much fresh research into Calderón's writings and their attributions. This elegant, erudite work will bring Calderón to a new audience both within and beyond Spanish studies. With illustrations, extensive notes and a detailed index, this is the most comprehensive English-language book on Calderón, and it will long remain the key work of reference on this important author.

This book offers readers worldwide the first edition of Juan Isidro Fajardo's Índice de todas las comedias impresas hasta el año de 1716 preserved in a single surviving manuscript in Spain’s National Library. Indispensable to scholars, this meticulously annotated critical edition of an early 18th-century catalogue documents some 2,200 plays written during Spain’s Golden Age by such worldclass playwrights as Calderón, Lope de Vega, Tirso, Moreto, Rojas Zorrilla, and many others.In this landmark edition, Fajardo’s manuscript reference work is transformed into an accessible and enduring scholarly resource. The editors' research has supplied 1,651 annotations to the play titles listed, many of which contain fresh insights into the theatre and culture of seventeenth-century Spain. Descriptions are given of early printed plays and of important manuscripts. Textual differences are discussed as are the sources from which dramas are derived. Many of the play entries address questions of authorship and dates of composition, while recording, too, early performances, the venues, and the theatre companies involved. The notes usually conclude by commenting on studies, editions and translations relevant to the dramas concerned. With its introduction, bibliographies and documentation, this critical edition is an invaluable medium through which to deepen understanding of the theatre, literature and society of Early Modern Spain.Dedicated to Don Cruickshank, whose death occurred before the project's completion, this volume also contains articles which assess his influential career and publications, both focussed on the Golden Age of Spanish drama.The chapters in this book, including the first edition of Fajardo’s catalogue of Spanish 17th-century printed plays, were originally published as a Special Issue of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies.