The Limits of Illusion: A Critical Study of Calderón

This is the first thorough study of Calderón in comparison with other important dramatists of the period: Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina in Spain, Racine and Corneille in France, and Shakespeare and Marlowe in England. Cascardi studies Calderón’s paradoxical engagement with illusion in its philosophical guise as scepticism. He shows on the one hand Calderón’s moral will to reject illusion and on the other his theatrical need to embrace it. Cascardi discusses plays from every period to show how in Calderón’s best work illusion is not rejected; instead, scepticism is absorbed. Calderón is placed in and defined against the philosophical line of Vives, Descartes, and Spinoza. Of central importance to this argument is Calderón’s idea of theatre and the various transformations of that idea. This emphasis will give the book an additional interest to students, readers in philosophy and comparative literature.

Preface; Acknowledgments; Note on texts and notes; Introduction; 1. La vida es sueno: Calderón’s idea of a theatre; 2. La dama duende; 3. Calderón and Tirso: El galán fantasma; 4. El secreto a voces: language and social illusion; 5. Toward tragedy; 6. El médico de su honra; 7. Herod and Hercules: theatrical space and the body; 8. El mágico prodigioso and the theatre of alchemy; 9. The illusions of history; 10. Authority and illusion: En la vida todo es verdad y too mentira; 11. The use of myth: Eco y Narciso; 12. Prometheus and the theatre of the mind; 13. Calderón’s last play: the comedia as technology and romance; Notes; Index.