In Il guerriero, l’amazzone, lo spirito della poesia nel verso immortale del Foscolo (1959) Carlo Emilio Gadda* writes that Foscolo’s entire literary production can be reduced to the desire for ‘‘marble women in their nightgowns—or preferably out of them—who are called by him ‘virgins.’ ’’ In addition to underscoring the link between Foscolo’s oeuvre and
Though Neoclassical aesthetic principles and practices continued to be advocated for over a century after Luza´n’s trailblazing text, they did little to diminish the appeal of popular drama, which flourished in spite of the absence of explicit theoretical underpinning.5 What the aesthetic debates made evident was the diversity of tastes in contemporary audiences. It might
A younger contemporary, Jose´ de Can˜izares, contributed more substantially to the renewal of the theatre, not only as dramatist but also as official censor of plays. Among his more important works are the magic comedies Don Juan de Espina, El anillo de Giges (“Giges’ Ring”), Marta la Romarantina, and Juana la rabicortona, though he also
Baroque drama, with Caldero´n to the fore, was staged less and less in the eighteenth century, with the values and forms of behavior it contained ceasing to be relevant to a new Spain in constant evolution, in spite of the on-going debate over the adoption of new value systems or the maintenance of traditional ones.