Calderon and the Baroque Tradition

Book excerpt: Calderón and the Baroque Tradition is the outcome of a tricentennial commemoration of the seventeenth century Spanish poet and dramatist, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and a tribute to a distinguished tradition in Calderonian studies at the University of Toronto. A major dramatist of the Spanish Golden Age and a master of the auto sacramental genre, Calderón produced some one hundred and twenty comedias and eighty autos during his rather colourful lifetime. This volume assembles an impressive collection of essays relating the baroque artistic tradition to such aspects of Calderón's theatre as the use of music, mythology, costume, and his distinctive dramatic technique. It will be of interest and value both to students of Spanish drama and Hispanic life in general and to followers of Calderón in particular.