Jimena. A Woman in Spanish Literature (review)

Reviews137 sights on authors and plays which heretofore have received scant attention. The range in this introductory volume ofa critical trilogy is broad and brief; more detailed treatments are promised to be forthcoming in the other installments . At times the new data collide with old historiographical assumptions , and sometimes rhetoric, i. e., the connotations of "baroque" and "school," seems to unduly control the commentary. All the same, the field ofSpanish theatre from 1640 on is significantly opened up by La escuela de Calderón. This reviewer looks forward to reading the rest of Mackenzie's trilogy. C. George Peale California State University, Fullerton Ratcliffe, Marjorie. Jimena. A Woman in Spanish Literature. Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanística, 1991. Bound. 312 pp. The topic ofthe book is a review ofthe life ofJimena, the Cid's wife, in history, myth and fiction. Chapter I recounts all that is known from historical documentation about Rodrigo, Jimena, and their children, while the following chapter reviews the many appearances of both in medieval manuscripts . Chapter III reviews the medieval bases for Renaissance treatments ofthe characters. The reemergence ofthe Cidian theme in the Romantic period is recounted in Chapter IV. Chapter V carries the continued interest in the story as myth of authority into the twentieth century. The conclusion is a recap ofthe earlier chapters. Chapter III, ofparticular interest for readers ofthisjournal, begins with a thorough review of the medieval sources of sixteenth and seventeenth century treatments of the story of El Cid and his time. It is followed by a catalogue , with plot summaries, of every (according to the author) literary work which deals with any aspect of the Cid's family or associates, such as King Fernando and his children Sancho, Urraca, Elvira, García, Alfonso, and Vellido Dolfos. This includes even works which do not mention Jimena. The synopsis of each work, arranged by date, is preceded by a short sketch ofthe life ofthe writer. Comedia poets treated are Juan de la Cueva (Comedia de la muerte del rey don Sanchoy reto de Zamorapor don Diego Ordonez ), Pedro Liñán de la Reaza (Las hazañas del Cidy su muerte, con la tomada de Valencia), Alonso Hurtado de Velarde (Comedia del Cid, doña Elvira y doña iSW-title only, since the play has been lost), Guillen de Castro (Las mocedades del Cid and Las hazañas del Cid), Tirso de Molina (who 138BCom, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Summer 1994) took up the story-peripherally, according to Ratcliffe, in El cobarde más valiente ), Lope de Vega (Las almenas de Toro), Juan Bautista Diamante (El honrador de supadre and El cerco de Zamora), Gerónimo Cáncer y Velasco (Las travesuras del Cid), Juan de Matos Fragoso (El amor hace valientes y toma de Valenciapor el Cid), Fernando de Zarate y Castronovo (or Antonio Enrique [sic] Gómez) (El noble siempre es valiente), Francisco Bernardo de Quirós (El hermano de su hermana), and Francisco Polo (El honrador de sus hijas). The book, which has an extensive bibliography ofresearch onjust about anything related to the Cid, could have been more accurately titled to indicate this breadth. Its primary usefulness is as a compilation, with period-byperiod summaries, of works on this general topic. It would have benefitted greatly from the attention of a copy editor to correct problems with grammar and sentence structure. Anita K. Stoll Cleveland State University Stoll, Anita K., editor. Vidasparalelas. El teatro españoly el teatro isabelino : 1580-1680. London and Madrid: Tamesis Books, 1993. "Serie A. Monografías," 153. 141 pp. An astonishingly informative collection of essays has been fashioned from the poceedings ofthe 1991 Almagro Symposium. They show how the convergences and the divergences of the paths followed by the verse dramatists of Spain and England have importance for revealing an age. D. W. Cruickshank presents the most extensive paper, on the (few) English characters in Spanish plays as against the (many) Spaniards visible on the boards in London, in plays the texts of which survive. He sketches the political relations between Tudors, Stuarts and Habsburgs, almost always hostile except for the 1623 season of marriage plans, ofthe Prince ofWales to the Infanta. Between 1580 and 1680...