Aproximación estructural al teatro de Lope de Vega (review)

Reviews77 the pureza de sangre as a topos of major import. Other concepts that governed society receive discussion, and over all, implicitly or explicitly, there is a note of idealism that hardly existed in the reality of the culture. Lope's characters are nearly always of the upper classes that had the power to make Spain what it was; the lower-class characters are usually ignored except for occasional use and then often for comic episodes. Diez Borque, then, interpreting Lope's intention as in line with the Maravall thesis, expresses neither approval nor disapproval of Lope's attitude toward his dramatic topoi, nor does he choose to remind his reader that all drama distorts more or less the reality it portrays. One might wonder why the author chose the fifty-three plays from which he quotes rather than others. The plays documented date from no earlier than 1617-21, the bracketed years for Dios hace reyes, to 1635, and thus embrace the first decade and more of the reign of Felipe IV. What might a careful examination of Lope's other plays show? Until this is done, there will remain a doubt of the Maravall-Diez Borque thesis. Indeed, a doubt had already been expressed. It appeared in an article by Professor Javier Herrero, «Lope de Vega y el Barroco: La degradación por el honor,» Sistema, 6 [1974], 49-71: Herrero interprets Lope's El perro del hortelano, composed probably in 1613, as a harsh attack on the stratified and unchangeable social system that rested on the aristocracy's distorted conception of honor. As for dramatists other than Lope, Professor Henry Sullivan's contention in his Tirso de Molina and the Drama of the Counter Reformation (Amsterdam , Rodopi, 1976), documents the dramatist's attack on major factors affecting the customs and the thinking of the period. The book was reviewed favorably by Professor William Blue in BCom for Spring 1978 but unfavorably , by Professor C. Alan Soons in The Journal of Hispanic Studies, 2 (1978). The Maravall-Diez Borque thesis thus has its defenders and its detractors; further careful research should eventually offer added evidence pro and con. Experienced and practiced students of the Comedia will discover little that is new in the Diez Borque book, but those in the process of getting acquainted with the genre will find much of value. The volume's material is well organized and it is indeed a book that was waiting to be written. GeraldE. Wade University of Tennessee FORASTIERI BRASCHI, EDUARDO. Aproximación estructural al teatro de Lope de Vega. Madrid-San Juan: Hispanova de Ediciones, S. ?., 1976. 188 pp. $6.75. Forastieri's structural approach offers a combination of two opposed methodologies: the examination of the historical context of a work and the establishing of a generative model for the internal means of organization of the text. The author refers to these two levels as the significación of the comedia and its sentido, as he segregates his findings into different chapters: 78Bulletin ofthe Comediantes chapters I and IV elaborate on structural-semiotic models, while chapters II and III provide historical grounding for the corpus of Lope's plays united by a common theme, or «elementary sequence» in structuralist terms: the honra del villano (1610-1615). Forastieri avoids problems usually examined by semioticians of the theater, such as theatrical performance or the relationships between visual and auditory signs. Instead, he emphasizes the narrative aspects, the theatrical diegesis, referred to by Patrice Pavis as «la partie non théâtrale du théâtre» (Problèmes de sémiologie théâtrale [Montr éal, 1976], p. 68). The objective here, however, is the classificatory scheme for the comedia, a procedure revolving around the analysis and description of a central, characteristic sequence of actions -Provocación (P)-yReacción (R.)-)Sanción (S) -, based on the notion of macrosequence formulated by Paul Larivaille («L'analyse (morpho) logique du récit,» Poétique, 19 [1974], 368-382). Departing also from semiotic analyses, the author utilizes Greimas's modèle constitutionel, rather than the modèle actantiel (see Anne Ubersfeld, Lire le théâtre, [Paris, 1977]). Recognizing Propp's concept that the character is absorbed by...