| Paper 1727-c | 'Atlante que fuerte acaudilla': Reception, Construction, and Reconstruction of Castilian Epics in Modern Spanish Theatre
(Language: English)
Alberto Escalante-Varona, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Extremadura, Cáceres
Index terms: Bibliography, Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Spanish or Portuguese, Performance Arts - Drama |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
In this paper, I discuss the utilisation of medieval models of sanctity by the 17th-century religious women who were among the earliest settlers of New France. Tridentine theology and the religious norms it established have typically been emphasised in the study of conventual culture in Québec and Montréal. In contrast, I consider the introduction into French Canada of medieval cults of saints (Helen, Catherine of Siena) and sites (Loretan santa casa) and how they were performed by female religious women of European origin, such as Marie de l'Incarnation and Cathérine de St.-Augustin, and by indigenous converts to Christianity like St Cathérine Tekakwitha. My analysis is informed by colonial pictorial evidence that visualises the memory and ongoing authority of medieval beliefs and practices in New French convents.
Paper -b:
The modern English collection of women saints' lives titled Lives of Women Saints of Our Country of England demonstrates a way of connecting with the past, by remembering what is forgotten - the medieval notion that virginity and widowhood are superior to wifehood. The author's praise of virginity and holy widowhood at the beginning of the book is presented as ancient, authoritative, and helpful despite the Protestant emphasis on marriage. The virginal or widowed lives of women saints in the book exemplify the wisdom of ancient fathers; their exempla enable the readers to remember the Catholic past of the English nation through the stages of women's lives that existed, be it in the 7th century or the 17th.
Paper -c:
In this paper, we propose the study of the theatrical reception of the medieval tale of Fernán González. The first count of Castile, as the legendary origin of Spanish royal lineages, is perceived as a powerful Christian hero by the nation. In this process, theatre stands as a powerful performative way of transmission of the epic motifs that characterise the hero and his adventures. Our purpose is to revise the bibliography of medieval chronicles and clerical texts where the legend is configured (Libro de Fernán González, Estoria de España, Gonzalo de Arredondo's chronicles). Furthermore, we will point how they are read for the composition of a selection of Spanish plays from the Baroque and the Enlightenment period.
Paper -d:
Following the disaster of the Second Crusade, Bernard of Clairvaux spent the years 1148 to 1152 writing the treatise On Consideration for Pope Eugenius III, advising him of his papal duties. Over three and one-half centuries later, two Camaldolese hermits, Paola Giustiniani and Pietro Querini, drew on their memory of Bernard's work in writing a libellus to Pope Leo X at the beginning of his pontificate with their advice for his papacy. This paper will demonstrate the echoes of Bernard on papal authority, church reform, secular rulers, and crusade found in the hermits' libellus.
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