- Overview
- Module description
Love and Death in Spanish Drama (MLS2060)
15 credits
The module will consider the dramatisation of love and death in a series of canonical texts drawn from twentieth-century Spanish theatre. Such universal themes are mediated, in the plays, by an exploration of the dramatic possibilities of Expressionism and the absurd (as in Divinas palabras), by self-conscious poetic drama (as in Mariana Pineda), or by folk drama in which magic, myth and legend are fused in a text with telluric overtones (La dama del alba). All three plays afford insights into the literary reworking of key motifs drawn from Spanish history and popular tradition, and their contrasting artistic treatment within the confines of the theatre. They convey a powerful sense of the Spanish collective imagination in its various representations of romantic love and raw passion, of the mystique and reality of physical death and its existential meaning.
