Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies
Subject: Iconophilia and Iconoclasm in the Spanish Comedia (16th-17th Centuries).
Supervisor: Prof. Ruth Fine.
Abstract: I study the reception of sacred images, objects and visions in Early Modern Hispanic theatre in light of Habsburg Spain’s ecclesiastical and political discourse. Some of the key topics I take into consideration include: the public performance of iconophilic and iconoclastic acts; spectacular martyrdom as a visual reinforcement of Catholic teaching; the theatrical adaptation of Christian and Crusader Renaissance epic; and the staged framing of heretical forms of worship (Muslim, Jewish, and Pagan).
By analysing a broad survey of religious and secular performances, I seek to map and question the always slippery boundaries of heterodoxy, focusing on playwrights who articulated dissenting or satirical responses to the Tridentine doctrines of sacred visuality. The eclectic corpus of Cervantes’s theatre, which still remains critically understudied, lies at the heart of this enquiry. I have published on Cervantes's use of biblical imagery in his comic short plays (entremeses), and I am currently writing an assessment of religious censorship in Cervantes’s long-lost play La conquista de Jerusalén por Godofre de Bullón.
President Stipen 2022/23