Abstract

This article explores one of the least studied aspects of Gongora's experimentation and innovation, his engagement with the comedia. The pervasive, unifying theme of ser and parecer in Las firmezas de Isabela (1610) serves as the point of departure for an analysis of the play's numerous discontinuities between surface appearance and underlying reality. Examination of the text reveals the presence of a fundamentally conflictive dynamics between comedy and tragedy, the conventions of the comedia de enredo and the language of culteranismo, and an appeal to passive identification and the insistent demands of a hermeneutic imperative. Ultimately, the reader-spectator of Las firmezas is drawn into a confrontation of epistemological methods, a struggle that pits strict empiricism against the inner light of faith. The development and resolution of this philosophical issue in the play provides new insight into Gongora's poetry and poetics.

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