Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Maria Conklin

Publication Date

7-11-2013

Abstract

This study examines the humor employed by the stock comic figure, known as the gracioso, in the plays of Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla, a major playwright of Early Modern Spanish Theater. The self-mocking nature of the humor employed by that theaters indispensable gracioso, with its subsequent prioritization of laughter, ties the comic figure to the then surviving medieval tradition of the popular carnivalesque. This tie lends the popular stock comic figure's humorous output an overall popular/carnivalesque identity that gives expression to a popular sub-culture. As a representative of the popular sub-culture, the stock comic figure's comical contribution, the laughter it produces, may be seen as a manner of confronting the hegemonic establishment and the societal values identified with the dominant echelons of society.

Degree Name

Spanish & Portuguese (PhD)

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Spanish and Portuguese

First Committee Member (Chair)

Rivera, Susana

Second Committee Member

Cardenas, Anthony

Third Committee Member

Colahan, Clark

Language

English

Keywords

gracioso, Early Modern Spanish Theater, Siglo de Oro Theater, Carnivalesque humor, laughter

Document Type

Dissertation

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