Beskrivelse
The work of the Spanish Jesuit dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) is often described as a paradigm example of early modern problems of knowledge, representation and skepticism. But his plays also use extensive material from the Latin Middle Ages. Amongst other things Catholic hymns, 13th century papal bulls and allegorical figures such as Thomas of Aquinas appear in the plays. This paper studies these Latin-medieval phenomena in Spanish Baroque drama in order to discuss how (and if) they can be studied as medievalisms; and which consequences this has for our understanding of a typical early modern dramatist.The paper then continues with the argument that Calderón’s medievalisms have an original and constructive relation to the (medieval) past. They are not used for a nostalgic or even ‘reactionary’ longing for a lost home but serve two acute functions of historiography and metaphysics respectively. On the historiographical level, they depict the Middle Ages as something which is part of who we are and not that which is to be overcome in order for us to be ‘modern’. On the metaphysical level, they are used to resist a typical early modern ‘disenchantment of time’ where only the present is a possible temporality.
Through medieval strategies of typology, Catholic theology and religious sentiments of celebration, the past and the future are simultaneously present in Calderón’s allegorical drama whereby a sense of the ‘ecstasies of time’ (Heidegger) are maintained. An authorship thus emerges, where the Middle Ages are used to create highly original drama but simultaneously aid to resist modernization theorems. I will therefore conclude the paper by arguing that medievalism (1) does not necessarily lead to nostalgia as sometimes assumed with literary studies and (2) that medievalism can help us maintain a more coherent view of history which does not overemphasize the ‘epistemology of breaks’ (Latour) or the sense of the medieval past as something irretrievably lost or inaccessible.
| Periode | 23. sep. 2022 |
|---|---|
| Begivenhedstitel | Medialatintias IX, 2022-Prague: Nostalgia and/in the Latin Middle Ages |
| Begivenhedstype | Konference |
| Placering | PragVis på kort |
| Grad af anerkendelse | International |