The Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Spain

Description

This is the first comprehensive study of the theatre of nineteenth-century Spain, a most important genre which produced more than 10,000 plays during the course of the century. David Gies assesses this mass of material - much of it hitherto unknown - as text, spectacle, and social phenomenon. His book sheds light on political drama during Napoleonic times, the theatre of dictatorship (1820s), Romanticism, women dramatists, socialist drama, neo-Romantic drama, the relationship between parody and the dominant literary currents of the day, and the challenging work of Galdos. A chapter on the battle to create a National Theatre reveals the deep conflicts generated by the various interested factions in the middle of the century. This readable account will at last allow students and scholars properly to re-evaluate the canon of texts.

"Gies' The Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Spain is the most comprehensive study to date of the Spanish 19th-century stage and offers the reader a rewarding glimpse into a significant art form of a major Western European country. Within the pages of this seminal text, Gies integrates the numerous and often contradictory social and artistic currents of a prolific century that produced more than 10,000 dramatic works in Spain...The book will undoubtedly become a seminal work in any undergraduate or graduate university course on Spanish drama...David Gies' perceptive study of Spain's 19th-century theatre brings alive once again the magic of opening nights, unforgettable performances, prominent playwrights, and even the resounding cheers of bravo, which we may also render to this book." Daniel S. Whitaker, The Virginia Quarterly Review