An Annotated Analytical Bibliography of Tirso de Molina Studies, 1627-1977 (review)

Reviews83 Of particular interest to comediantes are the chapters on Castillo's interludes and longer dramatic works. Again, Professor Soons urges us to read individual works against the generic conventions. He offers this especially useful observation on the nature of the interlude-as-farce: «This dramatic presentation does not imply the latent order beneath the confusions of the moment onstage as comedy does, but seems rather to be an intimation to the spectator of the basic instinctual anarchy which could be found if one were to search beneath the cruel imposition of society's conventions (p. 22). Given Castillo's mastery of the «rhetoric of persiflage» (p. 26) and his predilection for the humorous type (in the medieval sense), it is not surprising that his figurón comedies, El marqués del Cigarral and El mayorazgo figura, are his best. Beyond plot summaries, Professor Soons has very little to say about Castillo's plays in the romance mode (La torre de Florisbella, Lafantasma de Valencia) or the «historical» La victoria de Norlingen. One misses a more extensive application of his method; a discussion of the precise deficiencies of Castillo's dramatic technique would have been useful. The novellas of romance and fortune are presented as examples of«purveyed» literature. This is a felicitous term for the kind of escapist literature «with structures of consciousness and motivation never more than commensurable with those of the readers'» (pp. 72-73). In Castillo's case, his unreflective public is provided with fiction in which virtue, money and caste are eventually perfectly aligned. Roughly a third of the text is an anthology with English translation of Castillo's jocular poetry, primarily from the extremely rare Donaires del Parnaso (1624). Alan Soons has not evaded the difficulties of evaluating a minor writer, and I think he has been fair-minded. In the absence of innovation or insight, we can still appreciate the vivacity of Castillo's manipulation of conventional forms and ideas. Alison Weber Urbana, Illinois WILLIAMSEN, VERN G., editor. An Annotated Analytical Bibliography of Tirso de Molina Studies, 1627-1977, compiled by Walter Poesse, Columbia & London: University of Missouri Press, 1979, xiv, 238 pp., $27.00. Students of the Golden Age are indebted to Williamsen, Poesse and the twelve annotators for this extremely thorough and helpful guide to biographical and critical studies on Tirso de Molina written over the last 350 years. On the whole, accurate bibliographical data are given for 1,392 items, the vast majority of which are annotated in from a line or two to half a page with the annotator identified by that individual's initials. Williamsen in the preface describes this bibliography as follows: «For the present bibliography, which lists Tirsian criticism only, Professor Walter 84Bulletin ofthe Comediantes Poesse compiled, using a computer program, a listing of all items of criticism in previous studies and bibliographies, a total of nearly eleven hundred entries. They were, in turn, parceled out to the annotators, who searched , checked, read, and wrote brief content descriptions for each item on the basis of preliminary criteria that had been established to guide them in that task. The annotators reported as well any items they found that were not in the original compilation, and these were added to the list, as were those items that appeared in the years 1974 through 1977. The entries, now numbering more than thirteen hundred, were then returned to me for reviewing and editing» (p. xi). He continues: «Any item that we were not able to verify in the form of hard copy has been listed and marked with an asterisk ... If there is no annotation accompanying a listing that is not marked with an asterisk, it is because the reviewer or the editor felt either that the title was sufficiently descriptive of the contents or that the article was not of significant interest to the field of Tirso criticism as narrowly defined» (p. xii). Pp. xiii-xiv discuss the outstanding and most useful thematic index, pp. 227-238. It would have been helpful had a list of Professor Poesse's sources for the computer program been included. Certain portions, at least, of the bibliographies published in the Nueva revista defilolog...