This is the first comprehensive study of the theatre of nineteenth-century Spain, a most important genre which produced more than 10,000 plays during the course of the century. David Gies assesses this mass of material - much of it hitherto unknown - as text, spectacle, and social phenomenon. His book sheds light on political drama during Napoleonic times, the theatre of dictatorship (1820s), Romanticism, women dramatists, socialist drama, neo-Romantic drama, the relationship between parody and the dominant literary currents of the day, and the challenging work of Galdós. A chapter on the battle to create a National Theatre reveals the deep conflicts generated by the various interested factions in the middle of the century. This readable account will at last allow students and scholars properly to re-evaluate the canon of texts.

This is the first comprehensive study of the theater of nineteenth-century Spain, a country that produced more than 10,000 plays in the course of the century. David Thatcher Gies reevaluates the canon of texts, uncovering dozens of plays and authors previously ignored by critics, and placing them in the social and political context of their times. His book provides a readable overview of the known and unknown elements of Spanish nineteenth-century drama, and stresses the vitality of the theater at that time and the strong reactions it aroused in its audiences.

First Published in 2002. The present volume forms part of a major Bibliography of the Hispanic Theatre, forthcoming in several volumes by different specialists. As such, it is one of the products of a still larger computer-assisted Project of Hispanic Research Bibliographies. The aim has been to give as wide a coverage to the area as possible, listing not only books and articles in periodicals but also data of a documentary character such as items on playbills and the local regulation of theatres. Annotation is confined to information, and critical appraisal is excluded.

This volume traces social drama in Spain from its beginnings in the works of Moratin, treats those continuing the Moratin tradition, and studies the social drama of Tamayo y Baus, Ayala, Eguilza, Echegaray, the minor playwrights, and Dicenta and Galdos.

From its earliest appearance in the mid-1600s, the lyric theater form of zarzuela captivated Spanish audiences with its witty writing and lively musical scores. Clinton D. Young’s Music Theater and Popular Nationalism in Spain, 1880–1930 persuasively links zarzuela’s celebration of Spanish history and culture to the development of concepts of nationalism and national identity at the dawn of the twentieth century. As a weak Spanish government focused its energy on preventing a recurrence of mid-nineteenth-century political upheavals, the project of articulating a national identity occurred at the popular level, particularly in cultural venues such as the theater. Zarzuela suited this aim well, depicting the lives of everyday citizens amid the rapidly changing norms brought about by industrialization and urbanization. It also integrated regional differences into a unified vision of Spanish national identity: a zarzuela performance set in Madrid could incorporate forms of music and folk dancing native to areas of the country as far distant as Andalucía and Catalonia. A true “music of the people” (música popular), zarzuela offered its audiences an image of what a more modern Spain might look like. Zarzuela alone could not create a unified concept of Spanish identity, particularly with competition from new forms of mass culture and the rise of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship in the 1920s. Yet, as this riveting study shows, it made an indelible contribution to popular culture and nationalism. Young’s history brings to life the stories, songs, and evolving contexts of a uniquely Spanish art form.

In nineteenth-century Europe the ruling elites viewed the theater as a form of communication which had enormous importance. The theater provided the most significant form of mass entertainment and was the only arena aside from the church in which regular mass gatherings were possible. Therefore, drama censorship occupied a great deal of the ruling class’s time and energy, with a particularly focus on proposed scripts that potentially threatened the existing political, legal, and social order. This volume provides the first comprehensive examination of nineteenth-century political theater censorship at a time, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when the European population was becoming increasingly politically active.

Nineteenth-Century Spanish America: A Cultural History provides a panoramic and accessible introduction to the era in which Latin America took its first steps into the Modern Age. Including colorful characters like circus clowns, prostitutes, bullfighters, street puppeteers, and bestselling authors, this book maps vivid and often surprising combinations of the new and the old, the high and the low, and the political and the cultural. Christopher Conway shows that beneath the diversity of the New World there was a deeper structure of shared patterns of cultural creation and meaning. Whether it be the ways that people of refinement from different countries used the same rules of etiquette, or how commoners shared their stories through the same types of songs, Conway creates a multidisciplinary framework for understanding the culture of an entire hemisphere. The book opens with key themes that will help students and scholars understand the century, such as the civilization and barbarism binary, urbanism, the divide between conservatives and liberals, and transculturation. In the chapters that follow, Conway weaves transnational trends together with brief case studies and compelling snapshots that help us understand the period. How much did books and photographs cost in the nineteenth century? What was the dominant style in painting? What kinds of ballroom dancing were popular? Richly illustrated with striking photographs and lithographs, this is a book that invites the reader to rediscover a past age that is not quite past, still resonating into the present.

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Subject Stages argues that the discourses and practices of marital legislation, litigation, and theatrics informed each other in early modern Spain in ways that still have a critical bearing on contemporary events in Spain, such as the legalization of divorce in 1978 and of same-sex marriage in 2005.

A comprehensive exploration of the several subaltern types and social groups that were placed at the margins of national narratives in Spain during the nineteenth century. Una mirada profunda a los diversos tipos y grupos sociales que fueron relegados a los márgenes del relato nacional en la España decimonónica.