Synopses & Reviews
In the Golden Age of Spanish Theater, an age of highly dramatized coronations and regal spectacles, Alban Forcione has discovered a surprising but persistent preoccupation with the disrobing of the king. In both the celebrations of majesty and the enthrallment with its unveiling, he finds the chilling recesses in which a culture struggled to reconcile the public and the private, society and the individual, the monarch and the man.and#160;
and#160;
In brilliantly reinterpreting two of Lope de Vegaand#8217;s plays, long regarded as conventional royalist propaganda, Forcione places his texts in the context of political and institutional history, philosophy, theology, and art history.and#160; In so doing he shows how Spanish theater anticipated the decisive changes in human consciousness that characterized the ascendance of the absolutist state and its threat to the cultivation of individuality, authenticity, and humanity.
Review
"An impressive, exciting work of criticism and scholarship."and#8212;David Quint, Yale University
Review
and#8220;In its complex engagement with institutions of kingship, this massively original work enlightens readers on what it meant to be king of Spain from the Visigoths down to the Golden Age.and#8221;and#8212;Diana de Armas Wilson
Review
"Beautifully written and magisterial in its luxurious intertwining of literary, cultural, social, and political analysis, Majesty and Humanity is a must for all scholars of the Baroque."--Ariadna García-Bryce, Renaissance Quarterly -- Diana de Armas Wilson
Review
"Through a brilliant analysis that incorporates his readings in history, political science, theology, and theater, Forcione offers a fresh view of two complex and paradoxical plays."--Barbara Mujica, 1650-1850
Review
"Prodigious, both in terms of its erudition and analytical depth, Majesty and Humanity brings our reflections on the political imagination of the antiguo regimen to a new height. . . . The distinctiveness of this study, I would emphasize, lies in its relentless avoidance of simplification, in its utter command of Baroque multiperspectivism. . . . Beautifully written and magisterial in its luxurious intertwining of literary, cultural, social, and political analysis, Majesty and Humanity is a must for all scholars of the Baroque."and#8212;Ariadna Garcand#237;a-Bryce, Renaissance Quarterly
Synopsis
Martha Banta reaches across several disciplines to investigate America's early quest to shape an aesthetic equal to the nation's belief in its cultural worth. Marked by an unusually wide-ranging sweep, the book focuses on three major "testing grounds" where nineteenth-century Americans responded to Ralph Waldo Emerson's call to embrace "everything" in order to uncover the theoretical principles underlying "the idea of creation." The interactions of those who rose to this urgent challenge--artists, architects, writers, politicians, and the technocrats of scientific inquiry--brought about an engrossing tangle of achievements and failures. The first section of the book traces efforts to advance the status of the arts in the face of the aspersion that America lacked an Art Soul as deep as Europe's. Following that is a hard look at heated political debates over how to embellish the architecture of Washington, D.C., with the icons of cherished republican ideals. The concluding section probes novels in which artists' lives are portrayed and aesthetic principles tested.
About the Author
Alban K. Forcione is Walter S. Carpenter Jr. Professor of the Language, Literature, and Civilization of Spain Emeritus at Princeton University, and Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Emeritus at Columbia University. He lives in Princeton, NJ.