Indios En Escena - (Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures) by Moises Castillo (Paperback)

About the Book

Indios en Escena engages both the Baroque and Colonial fields of Hispanism in order to reevaluate fourteen major plays of Spanish Golden Age literature from a social-historical perspective. Castillo argues that these plays portray Amerindians not in their otherness but as subjects of an empire. It is the author's contention that these dramas reveal the vast contradictions between the two leading ideological trends of the age as performed on the stage: the discourse of honor and the juridical-theological code, both of which attempt to assimilate the Amerindian phenomenon under the auspices of church and state. These works consistently raise the paradoxical question of how a person can be a savage and have honor at the same time. Castillo claims that this theater propagates the concept of the Amerindian both as honorable subject, a theatrical archetype, and idolatrous barbarian, a model of representation that belongs to the mindset of religious crusades and evangelical enterprises.

Book Synopsis

Indios en Escena engages both the Baroque and Colonial fields of Hispanism in order to reevaluate fourteen major plays of Spanish Golden Age literature from a social-historical perspective. Castillo argues that these plays portray Amerindians not in their otherness but as subjects of an empire. It is the author's contention that these dramas reveal the vast contradictions between the two leading ideological trends of the age as performed on the stage: the discourse of honor and the juridical-theological code, both of which attempt to assimilate the Amerindian phenomenon under the auspices of church and state. These works consistently raise the paradoxical question of how a person can be a savage and have honor at the same time. Castillo claims that this theater propagates the concept of the Amerindian both as honorable subject, a theatrical archetype, and idolatrous barbarian, a model of representation that belongs to the mindset of religious crusades and evangelical enterprises.

Review Quotes

"In "Indios en escena", the reader perceives the passion and enthusiasm of a serious researcher of the topic. It is an excellent work for lovers of Spanish Golden Age theater and its issues, a work that is aimed as much at specialists as at advanced students of the baroque "comedia" with an Amerindian theme." --Beatrice Giannandrea, "Hispania" 94 (Dec. 2011): 757-58.

About the Author

Sobre el autor Moises R. Castillo es natural de Granada, Espana, y trabaja en Trinity College, Hartford. Ha publicado articulos sobre todo en teatro del Siglo de Oro en revistas como Bulletin of the Comediantes o Theatralia: Revista de Poetica del Teatro. En la actualidad su investigacion se centra en la representacion de las figuras del amerindio, judeo y musulm¡n en el teatro del barroco.
About the Author Moises R. Castillo, Trinity College, Hartford, is a native of Granada, Spain. He has published articles on Golden Age theater in journals such as Bulletin of the Comediantes and Theatralia: Revista de Poetica del Teatro. His current research focuses on the representation of Amerindians, Jews, and Muslims in the theater of the Spanish Baroque.