Pedro Calderón de la Barca and the World Theatre in Early Modern Europe: The Theatrum Mundi of Celebration

This book offers an original interpretation of one of the most famous images of literary history, the theatrum mundi. By applying methods of comparative literature, hispanic studies, and theology, the book reconsiders the world theatre’s historical peak in early modern Europe in general and the Spanish Golden Age in particular.

The book presents a new close reading of Pedro Calderón’s El gran teatro del mundo (c. 1633–36) and outlines the historical and systematic framework for a ‘theatrum mundi of celebration.’ This concept entails a way of using art to justify human existence in the face of changing conceptions of the cosmos – in the book described as an early modern aesthetic theodicy and a justification of the world in that liminal space between drama and ritual.

By discussing historiographical theories of early modern Europe, especially those of Hans Blumenberg and Bruno Latour, and through conversations with Shakespearean drama and Spanish Golden Age classics, the book also argues that the theatrum mundi of celebration questions traditional assumptions of great divides between the Middle Ages and Early Modernity and challenges theories of a European-wide early modern sense of crisis.