Resumen de Performable Monologue: Profiling the Unconventional Theatricality of "Tragèdia de Caldesa" by Joan Roís de Corella, a Valencian Writer of the Fifteenth Century
Written in 1458, Tragedia de Caldesa is the masterpiece of Joan Rois de Corella, one of the chief Valencian exponents of the early Renaissance in Spain. Arguably, this work, based entirely on the format of the monologue, constitutes an important specimen of an unconventional theater that rivals its contemporaneous counterpart of much greater renown: the dialogue-driven playwriting of Juan del Encina. Here I delve into Corella’s ingenious handling of the dramatic qualities that he deftly molds into a tightly-knit stage-worthy spectacle. Of special interest is the fashioning of a text that integrates a great variety of sources inherited from a bilingual and bicultural background. In fact, Corella is inspired by the two strains (one Castilian, the other Catalan) of the love-centered poetry and prose works that in his lifetime reached great popularity thanks to the numerous cancioneros and novelas sentimentales together with the poetry of the incomparable Ausias March.
