The trials of the Basque witches conducted during the 16th and early 17th centuries had a significant effect on the development of Golden Age Spanish Literature. Taunts and jests alluding to the punishment and humiliation of witches abound throughout many texts, as do scenes where characters are questioned about family histories that include connections to witchcraft; all this at a time when state and church authorities took the matter very seriously. In spite of this, many characters in the Spanish literature of the period were directly associated to magic. The most famous and imitated of these is la Celestina, who helped shape many subsequent female characters that exhibited magical abilities. Although magical characters are fairly abundant in the literature, witches per se, who would be portrayed as characters that violate Christian dogma or renege on their faith and engage in a pact with the devil, were not often seen in Golden Age Theater. This project will study a number of plays known today that feature witches; among them, Entremés famoso de las brujas (1675) by Agustín Moreto, Las brujas fingidas y berza en boca (late 17th century), an anonymous work, and Amazona en las Indias (1635) by Tirso de Molina. A fourth play will also be studied, Entremés de las brujas (1742) by Francisco de Castro. Although this fourth play was published in the 18th century, it makes use of the aquelarre as a narrative element, as seen in the work of Moreto and in Las brujas fingidas. Having selected these works, this project will focus on the socio-historical context under which they existed in order to determine if the witches they portray violate established social norms or if, on the contrary, they help preserve and strengthen them. We also seek to determine whether they uphold or challenge the perceived need to eliminate and/or punish social disorder. To answer these and other questions, we will study how beliefs and myths about witches are incorporated into these plays, how witches and witch-like characters interact with other dramatic personae, and how given social norms are inverted, especially when practices forbidden or regulated by the Spanish Inquisition are concerned. Lastly, this dissertation analyzes the social paradox that emerges from the portrayal of female characters associated with witchcraft in these four theatrical works. These characters are framed as contradictory figures that correspond, in one way or another, with the contrasting cultural forces of the era. Their presence on stage communicates the crisis of the baroque, under which the plot aligns with the mechanisms of control of patriarchal culture. To this end, we analyze the representation of witches not only as sources of divergent discourse, but also as a means of disseminating mainstream discourse and propaganda; since the portrayal of these women highlights their identity as “the other” to an audience that at the same time applauds them.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University

<p> This thesis examines the relationship between Giuseppe Verdi and the Paris Opera and the stage works that Verdi composed or reworked as a result of this business venture. Between 1847 and 1867, Verdi accepted four formal commissions for Paris: Jerusalem (1847), <i>Les v&ecirc;pres siciliennes </i> (1855), <i>Le trouv&egrave;re</i> (1857) and <i> Don Carlos</i> (1867). After a brief introduction discussing Verdi's career before Paris, each commission is discussed in detail from the genesis of the work through its premiere, and the eventual outcome of each opera. This study also evaluates the benefit of this collaboration to Verdi's international career given the requirements and time expended to produce each commission. It explores Verdi's adaptation to cultural differences, his handling of foreign business affairs, and his personal feelings toward French society. Much of the source material is drawn from Verdi's own writings and correspondence, as well as the writings of several Verdi scholars.</p>

<p> This dissertation focuses on the elements of performance that contribute to the actress&rsquo;s development of somatic practices. By mastering the art of articulation and vocalization, by transforming their bodies and their environment, these actors created their own agency. The female actors lived the life of the characters they portrayed, which were full of multicultural models from various social and economic classes. Somaesthetics, as a focus of sensory-aesthetic appreciation and somatic awareness, provides a pragmatic approach to understanding the unique way in which the woman of the early modern Spanish stage, while dedicating herself to the art of acting, challenged the negative cultural and social constructs imposed on her. Drawing from early modern plays and treatises on the precepts and practices of the acting process, I use somaesthetics to shed light on how the actor might have prepared for a role in a <i>comedia</i>, self-consciously cultivating her body in order to meet the challenges of the stage.</p>

<p> This paper aspires to perform an analysis of Early Modern character by thinking of character as a formative process, spanning playwriting to part-learning to dramatic performance. My analysis, which will focus on Shakespeare's <i> Coriolanus</i> and <i>Julius Caesar</i>, dismisses any notion of the Shakespeare play as holistic or complete text. I draw from Tiffany Stern and Simon Palfrey's <i>Shakespeare in Parts</i>, which establishes a methodology for the analysis of "part" or "cue" scripts, texts that feature a single character's lines amputated from the larger play. </p><p> In the Early Modern period, an actor's "part" or "side" would have included his own lines and the cues he needed to know to enter the scene or begin speaking. The part would have been learned in isolation, so the actor would have relied on cues to understand how his role fit into the larger play. I argue that the function of isolated parts and cues, or the last three to five words of any character's lines, is currently underestimated in critical analysis of Shakespeare texts, especially in literary close readings that focus on "character." </p><p> The textual space that Palfrey and Stern label the "cue space" continues to be underestimated, I imagine, because critics still view this space as an overly speculative construct. It is true that we cannot speak concretely about what an Early Modern actor would or would not have done, but we can highlight the implications of a potential performance decision. Cues, sites of stability surrounded by malleability, are ripe with potential performance decisions. By drawing from a methodology grounded in an understanding of parts and cues, we may more clearly contextualize the combative collaboration between actor and playwright through which character is formed.</p>

<p> During the 20th century, book historians, bibliographers, librarians, and archivists laid down the theoretical and empirical framework to understand the printed book as a commodity--a product of a specific market. In the 21st, the predominance of digital technologies and the cyberspace has made more evident than ever that print technologies created a specific market space for cultural exchange: the <i>printspace</i>. We propose <i> authorship</i> as a textual commodity, a cultural object that is shaped by the legal, commercial, and material limitations of the printing press as a platform of media communication.</p><p> Under this framework I present four study cases, analyzing different authorships associated with a specific print product, all in the context of the Spanish Golden Age. In the first case, I posit that the material characteristics of the <i>pliego suelto</i> produce a very specific kind of authorship that differs greatly from the authorship for books. Here, the works of Benito Carrasco and Crist&oacute;bal Bravo serve as an example and a probe for the market of <i>pliegos</i>. In the second case I contrast Mateo Alem&aacute;n&rsquo;s authorial project with how the readers consumed his authorial persona. This juxtaposition shows how an authorship is not the sole creation of the author, but the product of the mechanisms of production, distribution, and consumption of printed text. The third case investigates the interaction between the market of <i>comedias</i> and the market of printed books. The play <i>El Burlador de Sevilla</i> serves to illustrate how this transfer created persistent authorial problems. I demonstrate how the <i>printspace</i>, as a theoretical framework, can provide critical solutions to these authorial problems. The last chapter studies the authorships of Lope de Vega and Juan P&eacute;rez de Montalb&aacute;n as part of the editorial enterprise of the book merchant Alonso P&eacute;rez. This case exhibits the marketing strategies used in the construction of both authorships, and showcase the importance of the nascent figure of the editor in the market of books.</p><p>