The Spanish Comedia: On Canons and Kinds

THE SPANISH COMEDIA: ON CANONS AND KINDS JAMES A. PARR University of California, Riverside Two essential considerations for anyone interested in the basics ofseventeenth -century Spanish drama are: 1) the canon, including canon formation , and 2) the kinds of drama that comprise the unwieldy and unruly creature Lope called the Comedia Nueva. I speak ofcanons, in the plural, because there are several. Suppose we center the discussion on Lope and Tirso, in order to make it manageable. First, then, we might speak of the Lopean or Tirsian canon. Second, we might expand our horizon to deal with the canon of the Comedia as a whole. Within both the canon of an individual writer and of the Comedia as a whole, we would need to deal with several subdivisions: the select, critical, accessible, and potential canons. Third, we might expand our focus to consider the canons ofEuropean drama ofthat time, of all time, ofworld drama, ofEuropean literature and world literature, and so forth. It is thus no simple matter to situate adequately any given title, for the canons within which it might be classified and ranked are limited only by one's knowledge of literature. The potential canon would include all extant texts in any of the categories mentioned above. The accessible canon would center around those works that have received the recognition of a critical edition or have appeared in anthologies. The select canon is comprised of those works that have found their way onto reading lists and syllabi, while the critical canon tends to mediate between the accessible and select varieties, with 163 164BCom, Vol. 56, No. 1 (2004) an occasional foray into the potential canon, in search ofnew titles to add to the accessible canon, and perhaps eventually to the select canon. The largest grouping is therefore the potential canon, the next-largest is the accessible canon, and the smallest is—as the name would suggest—the select canon. The critical canon—consisting of those titles that have drawn critical attention ofwhatever sort—is the most amorphous and the most flexible, for it is free to range far and wide, although, in actual practice , it tends to focus on the select canon and to maintain a symbiotic relationship with this smallest grouping ofplays. This is probably so because we tend to work on those texts with which we are most familiar, and we are most familiar with those we teach over and over, which is to say those that are on syllabi and reading lists. The select canon is sometimes thought to be a zone of privileged discourse in need ofupdating. It seems that those who would dismantle the canon nevertheless have in mind replacement titles for those they would delete, thus perpetuating the concept. Proposed deletions and additions deserve consideration. When such proposals are scrutinized, it should be clear to anyone willing to sift through the evidence—and the rhetoric— that some texts make more powerful statements than others, while certain titles may clearly be the best available by a given author, or they may be the most representative ofthe several kinds of Comedia available. In point of fact, canon formation is a very democratic process. Votes are cast by doing studies ofa given author or text. Those authors and texts that receive most attention stake their claim thereby to a place in the select canon. Those that do not receive attention—even though they may have once occupied a place of privilege—will slowly make their way to the periphery. It is also true that texts presently at the center, such as La vida es sueño or El burlador de Sevilla, tend to attract continuing critical attention. This is so because they continue to be taught and also because each generation of critics seems eager to try the latest approaches on them, while also correcting the egregious errors oftheir peers and ofprevious generations. Thus we can say that there is a mutually-sustaining or symbiotic relationship between the critical canon and the select canon. Each feeds off the other to the benefit of both. IfI were to select one text to occupy the position ofhonor at the very center ofthe select canon, it would be...