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

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2024 Part 1
• VerfasserIn: Vangshardt, Rasmus,
• Place / Publishing House: Kalamazoo, MI : : Medieval Institute Publications, , [2023]; ©2024
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Early Drama, Art, and Music
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XIV, 240 p.)
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Acknowledgements --; Contents --; Texts and Translations --; Introduction: Plaything or Purpose --; Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity --; Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa --; Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo --; Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy --; Conclusion: “The Modern Age Begins with an Act of Theodicy” --; Bibliography --; Index of Names
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9781501517006; 9783111332192; 9783111319292; 9783111318912; 9783111319186; 9783111318264
• DOI: 10.1515/9781501517006
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Rasmus Vangshardt.

Rasmus Vangshardt 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, he reconsiders the world theatre’s historical peak in early modern Europe in general and the Spanish Golden Age in particular. The author 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 using art to justify human existence in the face of changing conceptions of the cosmos: 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, Vangshardt 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.