Tirso's View of Women in El Burlador de Sevilla

(Garden City, New York, 1964), p. 6. Socrates tells Protarchus (in the Philebus, nos. 4750 ) : "Generally the ridiculous is a certain kind of badness; it gets its name from a certain state of mind. It is that part of badness in general which is opposite to the state of which the inscription at Delphi speaks. Pro: You mean 'Know thyself,' Socrates? Soc: I do. And the opposite of that, in the inscription's language, would plainly be 'Do not know thyself ." Later Socrates says: "But by far the greatest number err about the qualities of the soul; they imagine that they are a great deal better than they are." 12 Lauter, p. 11. See also Gerald F. Else, Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument (Cambridge , Mass., 1957), pp. 68-89, 143-45, 18489 , etc. The "comic" in terms of the "ludicrous consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive" (Lauter, p. 14, quoting Aristotle). Castelvetro expands on Aristotle 's definition of the ludicrous and ridiculous : "Vice is nothing but human ugliness. This ugliness is of two kinds, ugliness of soul and ugliness of body. Ugliness of soul [Casandra 's ugliness] embraces the ugliness which proceeds from wickedness and that which proceeds from stupidity; . . ." (quoted by Lauter, p. 88). Castelvetro refers to those figures "who delude themselves through ignorance of the arts or of the sciences, and of those who, having an exaggerated notion of their powers, boast that they know or are able to do one thing or another, and then, failing in their boast, become ridiculous . . . our laughter is excited by our discovery that these persons have been the victims of self-deception. Hence it is not to be wondered at that boasters of this kind refuse to be taught and to learn from others, . . ." (quoted by Lauter, p. 91, emphasis mine). 13Cf. Maria Rosa Lida de Malkiel, "Para la génesis . . . ," p. 49: "el error de la profetisa que entrevé el futuro pero se ignora a sí misma , . . ." 14Michael J. Ruggerio, "Internal Structure and Suspense in the Sixteenth Century Spanish Theatre, "BCom, 23 (Spring, 1971), p. 11: "Gil Vicente's Auto de la Sibila Casandra . . . does not have a complete plot because the marriage problem is not resolved." His application of Aristotelian criteria forces him to see the absence of a resolution as a defect. According to the structure of the play, the lack of an "ending" in the Aristotelian sense should be interpreted as an acierto. 15Spitzer, pp. 71-72. See also Charlotte Stern, "Some New Thoughts on the Early Spanish Drama," BCom, 18 (Spring, 1966), 14-19, especially pp. 15b-16. 14 Frye points out that "at the end of the play the device in the plot that brings hero and heroine together causes a new society to crystallize around the hero, and the moment when this crystallization occurs is the point of resolution in the action, the comic discovery, anagnorisis or cognitio" (p. 163). TIRSO'S VIEW OF WOMEN IN EL BURLADOR DE SEVILLA Ruth Lunbelius, University of Georgia That Tirso brought before his audiences a rich variety of feminine dramatis personae, whom he often drew with a certain rare verve and empathy, is now little more than a critical cliché. But a bolder view, first propounded around the turn of the century by that untiring enthusiast of Tirso, Blanca de los Ríos, would align Tirso with the more extravagant admirers and champions of womankind. For instance, she claimed that Tirso "realizó una verdadera glorificación de la mujer" and lamented that in the preceding century "a tal poeta le tuvieron los preceptistas y le tiene aun parte del vulgo por detractor y calumniador del sexo."1 More recently, a concurring estimate of Tirso 's feminist propensities has come from Dr. Esmeralda Gijón, who sees in Tirso 's portrayal of women "un gran conocimiento del alma femenina," and considers him "el más decidido defensor de la mujer."2 In fact, "el respeto de Tirso a la mujer," she affirms, "alcanza hasta a las más perdidas."3 Dr. Gijón is, of course, well aware that throughout Tirso 's comedias many hard words and harsh judgments are pronounced against...