El mayor monstruo del mundo (review)

378BCom, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Winter 1996) tanille's 1991 edition oí Sémiotique des passions "abre nuevas e inmensas perspectivas metodológicas en el análisis del teatro del Siglo de Oro" (139). While chapter five primarily treats the allegorical figures in Cervantine theater, the historical overview of Spanish theater commencing the unit seems more appropriate as an introduction to the book itself. Moreover, there is no explanation given for highlighting Cervantes's theater here, nor are we reminded of a specific purpose for this shift to a particular author. Much of the chapter treats iconography, a branch of semiotics, by examining emblem books from the period, like those of Cesare Ripa and Alciato, then finding correspondences in the descriptions of figures from dramas. The discussion does draw from the microsemantic lexicon established in chapter four. Chapter six's topic is theatrical space. Relationships of inclusion and exclusion , of contiguity and belonging and their junctions with contact, distance , integration, separation, evacuation, expulsion and the like find textual support in examples from works by Andrés de Claramonte (a favorite author in this book) and Calderón. The decorated carts from the auto sacramental and their spatial structures, mechanical displacements and movement in all directions, whether scenic, parascenic or heteroscenic inform the balance ofthis chapter's discussion, with some new insights accorded to the semantics ofspace in El burlador de Sevilla. The bibliographies ofcited studies and comedias, as well as the briefone on the semiotics oftheater, along with the two indices of semiotic terms and of comedias quoted, provide helpful tools. This book fills an important gap between theory and critical application by sifting through the often conflicting terminologies of semiotics, appropriating theories of the Paris group (Traité du signe visuel), then showing how they relate to individual passages or plays from Spanish Golden Age drama. Donald E. Socha University ofWisconsin-LaCrosse Valbuena-Briones, Ángel J., editor. Pedro Calderón de la Barca. El mayor monstruo del mundo. Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta. 1995. Paper. 176 pp. $15.00. El mayor monstruo del mundo (published 1637, written c. 1631-33), is an earlier version of the tragic, honor-play, El mayor monstruo, los celos. Prior to Calderón's piece, its theme was found in Hebraic histories and dra- Reviews379 matized several times in Italy, France, and Spain, but Calderón's work is directly related to Tirso's earlier play, La vida de Herodes. Valbuena Briones is a well-known and respected editor of Calderón's works, and, in fact, this is not the first time V-B has edited El mayor monstruo del mundo (vid: Obras completas de don Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Vol. I. Madrid: Aguilar, 1966, pp. 455-89). V-B's introduction begins with a briefbiography ofCalderón (pp. 6-11), then touches upon the play's tragic plot in which the protagonist, King Herod the Tetrarch, mistakenly kills his own wife, Mariene, while attempting to kill the Roman emperor, whom he believed to be his rival for her graces. Mistaken identities focusing on the figure of the gracioso bring a bit of comic reliefto the tragedy. In his analysis, V-B resorts to a Jungian psychological approach to the play's characters, and thus characterizes the Tetrarch as an extrovert. He discusses the play's baroque style, its themes of predetermination vs. free will, and also provides a statistical summary of Calderón's polymetric versification, which was guided by the precepts of Lope's Arte nuevo de hacer comedias (1609). Although the predominant romance meter serves beyond its customary functions of exposition, narration and resolution, Calderón's versification effectively reflects the appropriate mood and tone of the moment in the play. Despite Calderón's huge vocabulary and poetic dexterity, his rhymes for muerte are limited, like those ofother poets, to the invariable pattern ofsuerte,fuerte, and advierte. In the course ofthe drama, the monstruo was attached metaphorically to various concepts and objects: love (73), Tetrarch (122, 167), the sea (147), and finally to jealousy (150, 168); the last, then, constitutes part of the title for Calderón's later revised version ofthe play. V-B describes the...