Hamartia in Reinar despues de morir

HAMARTIA IN REINAR DESPUES DE MORIR Alison Webek, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign In A. A. Parker's seminal article on Spanish Golden Age drama he elucidated the principle of "poetic justice" as central to the construction and understanding of the comedia: "In the Spanish drama, in accordance with this concept [of poetic justice], it was considered fitting that wrongdoing should not go 'unpunished' and that virtue should not remain 'unrewarded.' The converse of the necessary 'punishment' of the evildoer is also implicitly asserted, though not so invariably: namely that nobody should suffer disaster without deserving it ( unless, of course, he is the innocent victim of the wrongdoing that the play sets out to 'punish')." "Spanish dramatists present no victims of destiny or mischance, but only of wrongdoing — their own, or someone else's."1 To the extent that we accept the principle of poetic justice as the cornerstone of the comedia, it follows that we should not look for or expect to find Aristotelian hamartia —tragic error or "unguilty guilt." Studies of individual plays, however , have revealed occasional cracks in the ideological monolith of poetic justice , grey areas between the poles of innocence and guilt, problematical links between responsibility and suffering. A controversy has grown up around the very play Parker specifically cited as an example of the working of poetic justice — El caballero de Olmedo. One of the most recent contributors to the controversy , Willard King, argues that Alonso's death "cannot be traced back through the chain of cause and effect to shameful and illicit love, to diabolism, or to false standards of honor. . . G2 Alonso, rather, is "guilty" only in the sense that he ignores supraterrestrial warnings of destiny —he "trustfs] too much in the proven strength of his own arm, ultimately frail because it is human . . . ."3 Lloyd King has seen King Pedro in El médico de su honra as a tragic figure who, because of a flaw in his personality rather than conscious cruelty, brings suffering on himself and others.4 Raymond MacCurdy recognizes tragic hamartia in La próspera y adversa fortuna de don Alvaro de Luna — the protagonist is guilty of no moral error, only of a classical kind of hubris, overconfidence in his power and control .5 The protagonists of the honor plays El pintor de su deshonra and El médico de su honra have been analyzed as individuals who suffer because of intellectual or emotional error rather than because of deliberate malevolence .* Professor Parker, it should be noted, has also modified his views on poetic justice in his essay defining CaIderonian tragedy; in some plays, Parker finds that individual guilt is diffused by the "net of collective circumstances."7 If we look closely at individual plays, I believe we will find that the principle of poetic justice does not always remove suffering as a problem. Hamartia, the Aristotelian nexus of problematic responsibility , can exist within a larger armazón of poetic justice. This essay on Prince Pedro in Luis Vêlez de Guevara's Reinar después de morir is offered as an example in support of this contention. Although the word hamartia could mean sin as well as error in ancient Greek, in the context of the Poetics it appears that Aristotle wished to distinguish hamartia as a kind of human frailty from grave vice or depravity. Benjamin Jowett's translation reads that the protagonist of tragedy is "a person neither eminently virtuous or just, nor 89 yet involved in misfortune by deliberate vice or villainy, but by some error of human frailty. . . .8 The absence of deliberate or conscious perversity thus makes hamartia essential for the realization of tragic pity — "For our pity is excited by misfortunes undeservedly suffered" (Poetics, XI). López Pinciano in his Filosofía antigua poética (1596) expressed his preference for the "pathetic " tragedy for precisely this reason : ". . . que no sea, quiere [Aristóteles ], la persona mala ni buena, . . . sino que sea de tal condición, que por algún error haya caído en alguna desventura y miseria especial, y, ya que no sea caída por error, por lo menos, cuanto a sus costumbres, no merezca la muerte. Es...