The medieval tradition and the modern political realism in the theater of Calderón de la Barca

Abstract

In the Spanish Golden Age, the process of political secularization was accompanied by remnants of the medieval tradition. For this reason, the modern political realism, based on the doctrine of Nicolás Maquiavelo, opposed the medieval political worldview, subject to the guidelines of theology. In this sense, the baroque theater was a privileged, for unlike the philosophical or theological treatise, marked by doctrinal orthodoxy the scene, while was controlled by censorship, allowed an incipient dialogue between tradition and modern political though. In this paper, we propose to examine three plays of Pedro Calderón de la Barca.