"El circular coliseo": The Loa to 'El gran teatro del mundo' reconsidered

This essay reconsiders the status of the loa to Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s highly influential auto sacramental El gran teatro del mundo (c. 1635). For the last century, state of the art has been to consider it inauthentic and to have been written by Francisco Bances Candamo. The article begins with an examination of the arguments for this assumption. The second half comprises a textual interpretation of the loa regardless of its author. Through an analysis of four aspects of the loa, namely the style figure of metalepsis, the motif of ‘fiesta’ and the theological themes of theodicy and divine law, it is argued that the loa carefully prepares ways to see the world theatre as a means to the appreciation of Baroque reality rather than to the somewhat popular idea of the theatrum mundi as an experience of desengaño or vanitas.