Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

Publication Date

Spring 3-24-1972

Abstract

También tiene el sol menguante is a refundición of Mira de Amescua's two-part drama, La próspera y la adversa fortuna de don Bernardo de Ca­brera, concerning the famous fourteenth-century favorite of Pedro IV of Aragon. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a clear text of the play, along with thorough textual notes.

There are four extant versions of the play in question: 1) a hand­written, censored manuscript whose censures are dated 1655, 2) a printed version from a collection published in 1666, 3) a handwritten manuscript of the eighteenth century (probably dating from before 1735), and 4) a printed suelta of the eighteenth century. The first has been used as the basic play text for this edition, and the extensive textual variants of the other three have been annotated.

A problem which has existed in the past with regard to the play is that of authorship. Because of clear internal evidence, it has been known that Vélez wrote the first act and Rojas the third, but the iden­tity of the author of the second act has been open to debate. The edi­tor feels that Rojas is responsible for both of the last two acts, prima­rily because of the similarity in them to vocabulary and constructions typical of Rojas. A secondary reason for this assertion is found in some apparent structural parallels between these acts when contrasted with the first one, the work of Vélez.

Other sections of the dissertation are devoted to an analysis of the play's historical background, to a discussion of the different treatments of the Don Bernardo de Cabrera theme in Spanish drama and to criticism of the work.

Document Type

Dissertation

Level of Degree

Doctoral

First Committee Member (Chair)

Raymond Ralph MacCurdy

Second Committee Member

Sabine Reyes Ulibarrí

Third Committee Member

Marshall Rutherford Nason

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