Resumen de An Unconventional Spectacle at Plaça del Rei (Barcelona, ca. 1490): Moner’s “Momería,” Conceived in Catalan and “Textualized” in the Language of Castile
For about five years before he joined the Franciscan order at the age of twenty-eight, the Catalan writer, Fra Francesc Moner (1462/3-ca. 1495), garnered the reputation as a leading exponent of the bilingual (Catalan-Castilian) culture that flourished in the realms of Barcelona and Valencia during the reign of Fernando and Isabel. In his short piece entitled “Momería,” Moner documents the actual performance of a rare, stage-worthy specimen of a genre hitherto unduly neglected and marginalized. I submit that the specimen in question is a vestige of a latent tradition of unconventional theatricality stemming from the dramatic monologue. In the final analysis, “Momería” proves to embody the distinctive characteristics of a viable alternative (illustrated especially by Moner’s major compositions) that vies on its own merit with the splendid production, duly acclaimed, of such a renowned dramatist as Juan del Encina (1468-ca. 1530), Moner’s contemporary.
