The Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Spain

Description

This is the first comprehensive study of the theater of nineteenth-century Spain, a country that produced more than 10,000 plays in the course of the century. David Thatcher Gies reevaluates the canon of texts, uncovering dozens of plays and authors previously ignored by critics, and placing them in the social and political context of their times. His book provides a readable overview of the known and unknown elements of Spanish nineteenth-century drama, and stresses the vitality of the theater at that time and the strong reactions it aroused in its audiences.

"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