Oral Presentations - Session 1C: UC 330
DREAMS, FANTASY AND HISTORICAL REALITIES: A COMPARISON OF SHAKESPEARE AND CALDERÓN DE LA BARCA
Presentation Type
Presentation
Faculty Mentor’s Full Name
Jannine Montabaun
Faculty Mentor’s Department
Spanish (Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures)
Abstract / Artist's Statement
The playwrights of Europe contributed immensely to the flowering of cultural and artistic expression that marked the Renaissance. The most famous of these men is William Shakespeare, but his contemporary, the prolific Spanish author Pedro Calderón de la Barca, similarly lives on as one of the masters of the Spanish language. A multi-faceted man of many talents and interests, Calderón de la Barca was a Catholic priest, writer, poet, and dramatist. His work largely defined the Baroque era of Spanish comedia (theatre), a cultural phenomenon in which many aspects of Spanish society were reflected. A strictly hierarchical, highly Catholic country, rules for the theatre were just as strict as those for the rest of society. Shakespeare, meanwhile, lived in a relatively more open culture that permitted a more liberal writing style.
This study is composed of a literary analysis from a historian’s perspective of the overlapping and differing influences on the work of these two great men. In particular, I examine the function of dreams and fantasy in their work in an attempt to decipher the ways in which their separate social conditions determined the use of an alternative reality within their plays. Specifically, I concentrate on Calderón de la Barca’s famous La Vida es Sueño (Life is a Dream) and Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Side by side, it becomes easy to see the different functions that fantasy and dreams serve in their work, but also the different functions that plays and literature served within their separate societies.
Category
Humanities
DREAMS, FANTASY AND HISTORICAL REALITIES: A COMPARISON OF SHAKESPEARE AND CALDERÓN DE LA BARCA
UC 330
The playwrights of Europe contributed immensely to the flowering of cultural and artistic expression that marked the Renaissance. The most famous of these men is William Shakespeare, but his contemporary, the prolific Spanish author Pedro Calderón de la Barca, similarly lives on as one of the masters of the Spanish language. A multi-faceted man of many talents and interests, Calderón de la Barca was a Catholic priest, writer, poet, and dramatist. His work largely defined the Baroque era of Spanish comedia (theatre), a cultural phenomenon in which many aspects of Spanish society were reflected. A strictly hierarchical, highly Catholic country, rules for the theatre were just as strict as those for the rest of society. Shakespeare, meanwhile, lived in a relatively more open culture that permitted a more liberal writing style.
This study is composed of a literary analysis from a historian’s perspective of the overlapping and differing influences on the work of these two great men. In particular, I examine the function of dreams and fantasy in their work in an attempt to decipher the ways in which their separate social conditions determined the use of an alternative reality within their plays. Specifically, I concentrate on Calderón de la Barca’s famous La Vida es Sueño (Life is a Dream) and Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Side by side, it becomes easy to see the different functions that fantasy and dreams serve in their work, but also the different functions that plays and literature served within their separate societies.