CIAO DATE: 10/2008
February 2008
Center for German and European Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Spanish playwrights in the period between the French Revolution and the Spanish War of Independence became increasingly sensitized to militarization and conflict. Manuel José Quintana's ground-breaking Pelayo (1805) drew on tropes from Spain's historical past to discuss current and coming events. A new reading of Quintana's play suggests that he, among others, marked this rapidly changing cultural and political milieu with works that projected a growing nationalism and defense of Spain against the threats from north of the Pyrenees.
This paper was presented at the conference on The End of the Old Regime in the Iberian World sponsored by the Spanish Studies Program and the Portuguese Studies Program of UC Berkeley on February 8-9, 2008.
Resource link: Staging the Revolution(s) [PDF] - 219K