Rereading 'Fuente Ovejuna': 2 - Meanings of Reenactment
Wednesday 19 February 2020 (Week 5), 2-3:30pm
Kloppenburg Room, Cohen Quad, Exeter College, Walton Street
In this second meeting of the reading group in Hilary term, we will discuss the meanings of historical reenactments in the early seventeenth century. How did Lope 'reimagine' a fifteenth-century civic conflict one and a half centuries after? How was this staged (including the actual scenery, clothing, etc.)? Why was it performed as it was? How was it received and understood by the public? The main basis for discussion will still be the very text of the play.
Reading:
W.R. Blue, 'The politics of Lope's Fuenteovejuna', Hispanic Review 59:3 (1991): 295-315.
D. Gilbert-Santamaria, Writers on the market: Consuming literature in early seventeenth-century Spain (2005), pp. 63-82 (chapter 3: Violence, agency and the audience in Fuenteovejuna).
A. MacKay and G. McEndrick, 'The crowd in theater and the crowd in history: Fuenteovejuna', Renaissance Drama, n.s. 17 (1986): 125-147.
