La escena imaginaria. Poética del teatro de Miguel de Cervantes (review)

340BCom, Vol 53, No. 2 (2001) bor interpretativa o [. . .] Ia participación co-creativa" [501]) of a theatrical form that they attended for reasons of both devotion and recreation. Ana Suárez Miramón ("La función del pregón en los autos sacramentales de Calderón") offers a very interesting examination of Calderón's use of the pregón (public proclamation) as an example of the dramatist's incorporation of popular culture (in this case, a form of street music closely related to festival and spectacle ) into the learned medium of his autos. In general, the pregón served as an introduction or exordium to capture the public's attention, and, like others of the autos' constituent features , it helped to establish the superiority of hearing over all the other senses. The author traces precedents in other, preceding examples of the auto genre, as well as the Inquisitorial autos de feJohn E. Varey ("Carros y corrales") offers a brief but pregnant examination of the evolution of the auto sacramental as the evolution relates to the corrales, or open-air theaters, and the concomitant emergence and growth of the commercial theater. He concludes that the concurrent developments represent a case of mutual influence on both form and scenography. The contributions as a whole may not offer many true theoretical breakthroughs, but the editors do succeed admirably in their principal aim: offering a "puesta a punto de variados aspectos atañederos a la situación actual de este corpus en el campo cient ífico pertinente" (9). Barbara E. Kurtz Illinois State University Maestro. Jesús G. La escena imaginaria. Poética del teatro de Miguel de Cervantes. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/ Vervuert. 2000. 382pp. Jesús Maestro has surveyed the scene from the shoulders of the giants who preceded him and, from that privileged position, Reviews341 has glimpsed contexts and discerned subtleties that Cotarelo, Casalduero, and Canavaggio—to list only the alliterative names— either omitted or chose not tó delve into. Friedman and Zimic are also cited, of course. Maestro is editor of a journal of dramatic theory, Theatralia, and his title is professor of literary theory, so it is not surprising that the reader should sometimes be asked to stand on tiptoes in order to follow the argument. This is a robust and exhilarating piece ofwriting, one that has obviously taxed the writer and one that makes corresponding demands on the reader . The study is not impenetrable for all that. Jargon is kept to a minimum, and there is a nice balance between poetics and scholarship . What is most impressive is the author's ability to range widely in time and space, from Aristotle to Bakhtin and beyond in time, and with pertinent allusion to representative texts of the Western tradition, including all of the principal players, in terms of space. It is thus a comparative study in the best sense, one that is also informed by genre theory, hermeneutics, and the history of ideas. Few among us (certainly not I) could have brought together these disparate strands to create such a compelling and coherent commentary on drama in general and on Cervantes's poetics and practice in particular. I have learned many things from this book that I can put to good use in the classroom. The book is divided into four chapters and a brief concluding summary, plus a bibliography. The first chapter is an introduction , and it discusses literary theory and its applicability to interpretation , Cervantes, and the literary canon, Cervantes between Aristotle and Lope de Vega, and what he calls "transducción teatral" (more on this later). Chapter 2 deals with tragedy, its history , its experiential and existential aspects, and the Numancia as modern tragedy. Chapter Chapter 3 takes up the entremeses, relating them to the commedia dell'arte, commenting on their generic and performance features, and analyzing dialogue in particular . Chapter 4 discusses the comedies, emphasizing their experimental nature and the tensions evident in them between what he calls "la lògica de la poética clásica" and "los códigos de la comedia nueva." 342BCom, Vol. 53, No. 2 (2001) Maestro deplores the fact that Cervantes is not represented at all in the...