Cognitive Theories of Genre: The Prototype Effect and Early Modern
Spanish Tragedy

Barbara Simerka

Bulletin of the Comediantes, Volume 64, Number 2, 2012, pp. 153-170
(Article)

Published by Bulletin of the Comediantes
DOI: 10.1353/boc.2012.0033

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Cognitive Theories of Genre: The Prototype Effect
and Early Modern Spanish Tragedy

Barbara Simerka
Queens College, CUNY

inCe

its

advent

over two millennia ago, tragic drama has

captivated us: as audiences, readers, philosophers, and literary
scholars. At the close of the last century, there was a brief
decline of interest in genre theory as an academic enterprise,
when poststructuralist approaches shifted emphasis away from
the analysis of form in order to highlight issues of ideology

and identity. Currently, we are witnessing a rebirth and reconsideration of a
genre-oriented theory of tragedy, often informed by the insights of materialist
and postmodern studies. Recent advances in cognitive study have also brought
to light new knowledge about the human categorization processes, such as
the prototype effect, that can inform genre theory. In the present essay, I
will use these developments in genre study and prototype theory as points
of departure to offer an extended review of the anthology Hacia la tragedia
áurea: Lecturas para un nuevo milenio (2007), edited by Frederick de Armas,
Luciano García-Lorenzo, and Enrique García Santo-Tomás.

Prototype theories

of categorization provide insights into both the history and current status of
tragedy theory, illuminating such diverse aspects as the enduring legacy of
Aristotelian approaches, how the canon of prized tragedies changes over time,
and the status of hybrid dramatic forms.

1

Over the past two decades, cognitive psychologists have undertaken a

thorough reconsideration of the psychological, cultural, and social factors that
influence the processes of category formation as an intellectual process. One
of the leading figures in this field, George Lakoff unites research from various
strands of cognitive neuroscience in order to propose a new interdisciplinary
model of categorization as mental and social activities. In his groundbreaking
study, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, Lakoff asserts that the classical
model of categorization, based on the identification of “shared properties,” is
not incorrect but incomplete (5-7). The new paradigm of prototype theory,
associated most strongly with the work of Eleanor Rosch, takes into account
such factors as preferences within any given category. This approach reveals

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that category formation is neither disembodied nor completely objective
(Lakoff 15; Rosch, “Reclaiming” 62-64). Rosch’s cross-cultural research also
indicates that categorization processes are socially constructed and depend
upon highly variant notions of the relationship between material objects and
human perception (“Reclaiming” 65-66). Because the assignment of generic
labels to dramatic texts is in its essence a taxonomical activity, these cognitivist
insights are of immense value to comedia scholars engaged in the ongoing
effort to determine the nature of tragic dramaturgy in early modern Spain, and
to those interested in metacriticism of that enterprise.

Classical theories of categorization depict prospective members as

belonging to a group or not, depending upon the presence or absence of
requisite attributes. Lakoff observes that such paradigms depict categories
via spatial metaphors, with each grouping as an “abstract container” and
individuals as “inside” or “outside” (6). Lakoff and Mark Johnson have identified
the container metaphor as a key component of evidence for embodied
cognition (Metaphors 92-94). Their study, Metaphors We Live By, links human
understanding of the world to a series of paradigms that are specifically related
to the nature of the human body. A containment metaphor is an embodied
metaphor in which some concept is represented as having an inside and
outside, and as capable of holding something else. Embodied cognition helps to
explain classical approaches to literary genre theory that likewise state or imply
generic form as a container. Traditionally, the genre-theory critic has been seen
as an expert sorter who places prized texts within the most desired generic
boxes, while exiling deficient candidates to less prized containers. One of the
most interesting aspects of taxonomy is the process through which certain
forms of popular fiction, which are initially excluded from all receptacles and
hence denied status as “literature,” eventually obtain entrée into the club.
Prototype theory enables us to explore more deeply the way readers and critics
conceptualize the members within each container as well as relationships
among various textual “cookie jars.” The binary classical model of inclusion or
exclusion, with no middle grounds or shades of gray, also helps to understand
the anxiety provoked by hybrid entities such as Golden Age tragicomedy

.

In his analysis of taxonomical processes, Lakoff notes that the “genus” level

functions as the default position for folk categories, the instinctual models of
taxonomy that all cultures, even preliterate, ones, use to organize their worlds.
This

is “the level of biological discontinuity at which most human beings most

easily perceive, agree on, learn and remember” (Lakoff 35). This is also the level
at which cultures all over the world agree, as they do not at more specific or
more general level categories. In literary taxonomy, the categories of narrative,
drama, and poetry occupy the genus level; genre scholarship tends to agree
about the distinctions that separate these entities, and so

this level has not

been an area of focus. Lakoff also notes that at the species level of taxonomy,

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specialized training is needed both to recognize differences and to have an
interest in debating category assignments (35). The study of literary genre, such
as the determination of the nature and boundaries of tragic drama, occurs at the
species level of very narrow or fine levels of distinction; here, the insights of
prototype theory are especially valuable.

The model of prototypes and graded structures is based upon the premise

that the classical model is flawed in its failure to account for variations in status
among group members within a given container or taxonomy. Research across
many folk categories and across cultures has shown that not all members of a
given category are held in equal esteem (Rosch, “Reclaiming” 64-66). Eleanor
Rosch’s research on folk categorization of colors, birds, and even types of
furniture demonstrates that people consistently judge some members of a
category to be better or more representative examples than others. Categories
thus inevitably have a gradient structure that ranks members on a continuum or
scale from central to peripheral; this system of graded preferences is known as
the prototype effect (Lakoff 83; Rosch, “Reclaiming” 64). For example, within
the category of birds, robins are consistently judged to be more representative
than chickens; hence, we would say that robins, as the prototype bird, are
central while chickens occupy a more marginal position within that graded
structure (Lakoff 40-41; Rosch, “Reclaiming” 44). Within the field of literary
studies, this form of weighted taxonomy is readily observable; in the case of
tragedy theory, Aristotle’s essay not only describes a set of typical attributes,
but it also clearly delineates a gradient structure of more and less representative
tragic authors and texts.

Lakoff notes that while the taxonomies of the natural world are mostly

transparent, the central features and the limits of radial structures for many
social and institutional categories are not human universals but rather
relativistic, culturally determined structures. Such taxonomies must be learned
in the processes of social interpellation and are often the subjects of vociferous
debate (83). As the controversies of recent decades have shown, educational
interventions concerning the norms and taxonomies of the liberal arts can
become a politically charged and highly fraught arena, in which generic labels
such as “autobiography” and “testimony” played a central role in reshaping the
literary canon (Bolt).

Within a graded system, cue validity is the process by which we assess

the various features of an object and determine which characteristics are
deemed most important (Rosch, “Principles” 37-40). At the genus level of
categorization, cue validity is uncomplicated: all chairs have a back and legs,
and all drama includes words spoken by an actor to an audience. At expert
levels of subordinate categorization, however, gradient systems come into play;
attributes that are deemed as central to a prototype will be the ones that have
the highest cue validity. In the case of a theory of tragedy, scholars have long

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prioritized a set of features for which Aristotle established high cue validity,
such as serious subject matter; the hamartia associated with a noble tragic hero;
anagnorisis; and the tragic reactions of pity, fear, and catharsis. The fact that
literary scholars across the Western world are expected to know the meaning
of these terms in Greek is evidence of their long-standing centrality. Those
who seek inclusion of a nontypical text within the tragedy taxonomy—or to
improve a marginal play’s position within that graded system—often do so by
offering reconsiderations of Aristotle’s key terms.

Many taxonomical systems include one further level of gradience. In

debates concerning both basic membership and gradient ranking within a
category, some members hold a special status as “paragons” or “prestige
prototypes” (Lakoff 87). Lakoff characterizes the paragon or prestige members
of a prototype as those that have been awarded significant social recognition,
such as prizes, awards, or inclusion in halls of fame (87). These paragons are
highly revered within a prototype even if they are not typical members; early
examples or “generators” of a new category are often considered paragons
(Lakoff 12). In the case of literary study, the Nobel, Pulitzer, or related prizes
convey paragon status to contemporary texts and authors; for earlier texts,
paragon status is linked to canonicity and inclusion in widely used anthologies
as well as on reading lists. Debates concerning the nature of early modern
Spanish tragedy are particularly acute, precisely because, within the canon
of Western literature, tragedy occupies a central space as one of the seminal
generators of literature in Ancient Greece, as well as holding the central
location within the radial structure of dramatic forms. As a prestige or cherished
prototype, the label tragedy thus confers status on any text that bears it; in
addition, literary periods that produce a significant number of plays that are
categorized as tragic—and thus as central rather than peripheral to the history
and development of drama—are themselves given a more central place within
the graded structure of the canon. In the Tragedia áurea volume, all of these
new approaches to tragedy are employed; several of the essays confirm the cue
validity of Aristotle’s key terms, some seek to redefine the established cues, and
others offer new, non- or even anti-Aristotelian criteria by which they seek to
establish cue validity.

The prototype effect helps to explain why Lope and Calderón do not

occupy a more central place in the Great Books curriculum, as compared to
dramatists such as Racine who did not write in English. Here, two different
prototype systems are at work.

The cue validity that Hispanists have historically

employed when selecting the greatest and most representative dramatic works
of Spain’s Golden Age does not overlap in a consistent way with that used
to create the gradient system for Western drama. Spanish dramas whose cue
qualities align with the tragedy prototype are not esteemed among aureístas
because of perceived deficiencies concerning other attributes; on the other

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hand, the mixed genre works by Lope and Calderón that are granted prestige
status as paragon comedias occupy a space at the outer edges of the world
drama gradient. For this reason, scholars of comparative literature

who study

prototypical early modern tragedies are likely to overlook most Spanish dramas.
And, because literary anthologies are organized according to prototype schema,
they are less likely to include works that are recognized as well written and
exciting but that do not fit within the established hierarchy of prototypes and
paragons. The contributors to the Tragedia áurea volume reflect upon this
quandary and offer a variety of (contradictory) solutions.

Two of the essays in the volume raise issues that are relevant to the study

of tragedy as a paragon prototype. Florence D’Artois analyzes the way in which
Lope de Vega marketed himself and his own writings in the early years of Philip
IV’s reign, when he sought an elevated court position such as royal historian
(293). D’Artois notes a change in the types of texts that Lope included in the
Partes volumes of collected works published between 1622 and 1627, asserting
that Lope moved away from presenting himself as an acclaimed popular author
of mixed genre, comic-inflected dramas because that identity would not further
his political goals (294). Instead, Lope’s new “estrategia promocional” entailed
collecting and presenting for publication volumes that featured mythic, epic,
and tragic pieces in order to showcase “obras destaca[das] por su grandeza y
seriedad” (294-95). What D’Artois points to here is Lope’s awareness of the
differences in criteria between public theaters and official institutions. The shift
that Lope initiated reflects the paragon status that tragedy was accorded by the
literary establishment of his day and the desirability of highlighting his own
abilities in that genre in order to receive serious consideration for a royal post.
Lope’s (failed) attempt at self-fashioning as a tragedian reminds us that, even
though prototypical tragedy was not in vogue with corral audiences, it was
nonetheless esteemed by official taste makers of his day.

Santiago Fernández Mosquera highlights the enduring importance of the

designation of “tragic,” if not tragedy per se, within the modern academic world,
for improving the status of hybrid plays and the reputation of scholars who work
on those texts. He observes that, when scholars such as Alexander A. Parker
and Bruce W. Wardropper sought to reconsider the gradient position of mixed
genre works in the Calderonian corpus, which had not been accorded centrality
within the comedia canon by the founding fathers, they often emphasized “el
descubrimiento de los valores trágicos de sus comedias…[para] comprobar su
valor crítico” (162). (Francisco Ruiz Ramón follows a similar approach in his
study of Calderonian tragedy). Fernández Mosquera notes a related trend in de
Armas’s and Margaret R.

Greer’s studies of mythological drama and posits that

attempts to gain recognition for the tragic elements of underappreciated drama
might also be linked to “el mayor prestigio ‘intelectual’ que el estudio de la
tragedia tiene” (163). The essays by Fernández Mosquera and D’Artois confirm

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the underlying premise of the volume as a whole: that because of tragedy’s
continued status as the most cherished literary prototype, scholars who study
the dramatic production of any era or culture are attracted—even compelled—
to engage with this siren song.

Hispanists undertook a large scale reconsideration of early modern drama

in the 1960s and 70s in order to refute the traditional belief that Spain’s
Golden Age dramatists produced few authentically tragic plays; prototype
models of categorization can help us to explore the cognitive processes that
underlie genre theory and that enable the evolution or modification of literary
taxonomies. Raymond MacCurdy was one of the leading figures of that moment;
he noted that prior assertions of the paucity of tragedy derived from the way
in which these scholars “understood” tragedy, alluding to a broad consensus
concerning the gradient system for cue validity in tragic drama that he proposed
to dispute (19). MacCurdy devotes the entire first chapter of The Tragic Fall
to the “problem” of Golden Age Spanish tragedy: the debate over whether
such an entity even exists. He points to Federico Sainz de Robles’s assertion,
in his 1949 Diccionario, that there was no true tragic drama in Renaissance
Spain, as representative of a broad critical consensus that denied, ignored, or
marginalized Golden Age tragedy (18). He cites theories of a unique national
Spanish character and of a distinct sociocultural landscape as the factors that
scholars posit to explain the dearth they claim exists (18-19). One of the most
common explanations is that the Counter Reformation version of Catholicism,
with its emphasis on death as a transient phase on the pathway to eternal
life, was completely incompatible with the tragic view of death (MacCurdy
23). In addition, David Hildner points to the enduring impact of Voltaire’s
neoclassically influenced critique of comedia authors as flawed or even failed
tragedians (411).

The ghost of this condemnation from the past continues to haunt

contemporary scholars; in her essay on Rojas Zorrilla, María Reyna Ruiz takes
pains to reiterate that many of the works penned by this dramatist do indeed
merit the label of tragedy according to classical precepts. Likewise, Christopher
Weimer’s study of La hija del aire highlights the play’s strict adherence to
Aristotelian norms. He delineates the central importance of the three oracular
figures (including one who bears the name Tiresias) that appear across the two
parts of the diptych, who establish the classical cue quality of an inescapable
tragic destiny for Semíramis and the other main characters. Weimer emphasizes
a very pagan notion of fate in order to bestow the laudatory designation of
“tragedia verdadera” on these plays (405). Several other authors in the volume,
including Margaret Greer and Evangelina Rodríguez Cuadros, also express
vehement support for the existence of truly tragic drama according to classical
cue qualities; this insistence points to a lingering anxiety of absence or inferiority
in the comedia corpus, as well as to the indefatigable persistence of the

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Poetics as the paragon theoretical model. These essays, as well as the studies of
Renaissance drama considered below, substantiate that Spanish dramatists did
produce tragic dramas across the entire gilded century and that these tragedies
are meritorious according to even the most strict prototype scale.

One key point of MacCurdy’s study of privado drama was to reconceptualize

primary tragic terms and cue validity so that early modern dramatizations of
“tragic falls” could gain admission to the tragic radial structure; his body of
work on Rojas Zorrilla employed a similar strategy. This tactic of aligning plays
more closely with the cue qualities of tragic prototypes, by redefining the cue
qualities themselves or by recalibrating their importance, is echoed in several of
the essays in the Tragedia áurea anthology. Jonathan Ellis enriches MacCurdy’s
model of the tragic fall in his study of La gran Cenobia, as he explores the
epistemological quandaries the protagonists confront. Ellis’s vision of tragedy
moves beyond Aristotelian questions of fate and individual hamartia as he
delineates the Stoic and Skeptical elements in the text that undermine the
possibility of true knowledge and provide the framework for a tragic vision
(369). Similarly, in his study of En la vida todo es verdad y todo mentira, David
Hildner disputes the judgment of Voltaire and other neoclassical critics that
Calderón’s epistemological plays are too abstract to count as true tragedies (413).
Hildner reconfigures the cue quality of tragic anguish to include philosophical
quandaries as sources of genuine anguish and pathos, and also expands the
range of activities that define the tragic hero to include intellectual struggles
(415). Rodríguez Cuadros notes that Thomas Kyd’s notoriously brutal Spanish
Tragedy gave rise to an enduring stereotype of Iberian tragedy as irredeemably
sensationalist and nonclassical (187). She concedes that this corpus lacks many
of the prototypical elements but insists that most plays do conform to the most
central cue quality--eliciting the tragic responses of empathy and terror (188).
She cites the centrality of “la teoría de los afectos” in theorists ranging from
Aristotle to Alonso López Pinciano and Jusepe Antonio Gonzalez de Salas to
Ramón del Valle Inclán to substantiate this claim (186-204). Terry Eagleton’s
recent study of tragedy, Sweet Violence, also assigns über-paragon status to
such responses, in his bid to obtain tragic status for the excluded category of
real life horrors, such as genocidal massacres (15, 19). Rodríguez Cuadros and
Eagleton focus a laser beam on one particular tragic cue quality and relegate all
others to the periphery in order to make their point.

In her introduction to the recent essay collection Rethinking Tragedy, Rita

Felski points out that critics have long wrestled with the problem of works
that convey a “tragic sensibility” although they do not conform to a strict
Aristotelian model in terms of form, style, and content. Her primary examples
are Nietzsche’s championing of opera as an ideal vehicle for this sensibility, as
well as modern film genres such as film noir or Sirkian melodrama with a “tragic
resonance” (6-7). She also advocates including contemporary plays where the

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suffering protagonist is a “shopkeeper” rather than an aristocrat or monarch
in the tragic gradient system, as well as recognition of tragic narrative, such
as Faulkner’s novels (9-10). Felski distinguishes between tragedy as a dramatic
form and “the tragic” (often found in contemporary philosophy), which she
characterizes as a “thought pattern[,] … a prism through which to grasp the
antimonies of the human condition” (2-3). Eagleton likewise dedicates two
chapters of Sweet Violence to explorations of the tragic dimensions of non-
Aristotelian contemporary literature: drama with lower born characters as well
as nondramatic narrative forms. Eagleton and Felski and the contributors to
the Rethinking volume thus participate in the ongoing process of expanding
and reconfiguring tragic cue qualities in order to link the “resonances” in early
modern and recent literature and media with the privileged attributes of classical
drama. Often, they do so in order to stake a claim for recognition or improved
gradient status among currently marginalized texts or forms of expression. In
this volume, Carmen Mattza’s analysis of the tragic dimensions of the Marcela
and Grisóstomo episode in Don Quijote is the most similar to Eagleton and
Felski’s approaches. Although neither the novel as a whole nor the individual
episode suffer from critical neglect or taxonomical marginalization, Mattza’s
essay succeeds in shedding new light on the generic dimension of the novella
and offers new possibilities for intertextual study of these characters and their
situation.

Citation of these bold claims concerning the tragic dimension of nondramatic

texts serves a dual purpose within this review: both to contextualize the
reconsiderations of tragic cue qualities offered in the Tragedia áurea volume
and to show that the rethinking proposed there is very much in line with larger
trends in the field. Specifically, a number of the studies presented continue the
decades-long discussion among aureístas concerning the possibility of a tragic
designation for mixed genre plays, especially those with substantial humor or
a partially happy ending. As the chapters and essays in Sweet Violence and
Rethinking Tragedy demonstrate, it is productive and illuminating to study
tragedy and tragic texts within a single framework.

Francisco Cascales and Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, writing in the

seventeenth century and nineteenth century, respectively, focus on the
comedia as a highly contaminated and hence defective form of dramatic
representation. They employ an aesthetic of generic purity and use the classical
form of container taxonomy to exclude from the tragedy gradient any plays
that contain any comic elements. Both blame Lope de Vega’s popularization
of polygeneric drama for killing off tragedy just as Spain was entering its most
illustrious era of literary production (MacCurdy 19). For most of the twentieth
century, scholarship continued these lines of thought, including the well-
received dramatic studies of Karl Vossler and Esteban Pujals (MacCurdy 24-
25). James Parr’s After Its Kind sought to provide a more nuanced perspective

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of mixed genre drama and proposed a four-part gradient system including
“serious drama” (75, 90). Although his model has been widely cited in studies
of individual works published over the past two decades, it has not caught on
as a replacement for the binary Aristotelian model. Prototype theory illuminates
the enduring influence of paragon texts, literary and theoretical alike, and thus
helps us to understand why attempts to reconfigure dramatic genre gradients
are so often Sisyphean endeavors. Refutation of these claims, and new
conceptualizations of tragedy that accord a more favorable gradient position to
hybrid works, is a central focus of the Tragedia áurea volume.

From the perspective of genre study, La destrucción de Numancia may

very well be the most controversial play within the early modern Spanish
canon, in that its relation to tragedy has attracted sustained attention over many
decades. Cervantes’s dramatic work straddles the border between the center
and periphery of the comedia gradient for a variety of reasons. It is considered
the best serious drama by the paragon author of Iberian literature. Like Lope’s
paragon tragicomedies, it stages an iconic moment in Spanish history. It is also a
highly engaging tale of love, valor, and sacrifice. Nonetheless, the play’s generic
status has been seen as problematic for a variety of reasons. As the essays by
Edward Friedman and Margarita Peña note, those troubling aspects include a
mass suicide that is “monstrous” and unchristian; allegorical figures associated
with (inferior) medieval drama; and an optimistic closing prophecy that deviates
from the most prized form of tragic emplotment. The four essays on the volume
that investigate this play present a microcosm of possible approaches to hybrid
drama with prominent tragic components.

Peña’s essay addresses all of the above concerns in order to propose her

vision of “la esencia de la tragedia” in Cervantes. Peña focuses on refuting
the criticism that the play’s tragic status is endangered because Cervantes
dramatizes allegorical figures who predict a glorious future for the descendants
of the doomed Numantians. She proposes that, despite the optimistic
prophecies, the staging of absolute “miserias, tristezas, y llantos” corresponds
to the prestigious and central (Aristotelian) model of “tragedia patética” rather
than to the less admired generic mixtures found in tragicomic works (63). Peña
further denigrates tragicomedy as peripheral by associating it with the dramatic
practices and theoretical treatises of sixteenth-century Italy rather than classical
Athens (63). In addition, she aligns Cervantes’s use of allegory with that of
Calderón, the paragon of Spanish tragic dramaturgy (68). She also makes
extensive use of taxonomic arguments that depend upon the prototype model
in order to defend the tragic gradient status of Numancia. Peña’s approach can
be characterized as an exemplary version of conventional defenses of the tragic
merit of hybrid dramas; she supports the traditional norms and definitions of
tragic cue validity and focuses attention on those moments of the drama that do
conform to these norms.

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Martha García offers a potentially promising paradigm of order and chaos

within Numancia. She relies, however, on medieval rather than classical
constructions of the tragic hero and his social milieu, and to Aristotle’s
Rhetoric rather than his Poetics, but she does not use this as a point of
departure for proposing a new interpretation of early modern tragic poetics
based on medieval critical texts. While her study offers interesting insights
into the play’s themes, she does not truly engage with the major lines of
inquiry into its nature as tragedy. For example, she alludes to Scipio as an
antagonist who experiences anagnorisis but does not address Frederick de
Armas’s classic essay, which posits the Roman general as the true tragic hero
(Peña 258, de Armas 35). Further, in her discussion of the aspects of Senecan
tragedy present in this work, she completely disregards the depictions of
horrific violence that are normally at the forefront of any discussion of the
Hispano-Roman author’s influence on sixteenth-century dramaturgy. García’s
view of Cervantes’s siege drama as an exploration of chaos and injustice could
be used as a point of departure to enter into a productive dialogue with the
current wave of ideological reconceptualizations of tragic cue qualities. The
essay does not reference this trend, however, and does not, in fact, appear to
assert that the play stages an oppositional stance. García’s highly idiosyncratic
reading suffers from a lack of direct engagement with either the main points
of contention surrounding this much-studied play or with any of the current
trends in tragedy theory.

Friedman notes many of same irregularities in the plot and tone of

Cervantes’s dramatization of Spanish history as specified above. He does not
support Peña’s vision of a predominantly pathetic and hence tragic modality,
however; rather, he emphasizes the ways in which Numancia evokes both
pagan and Christian models of tragedy and redemption in order to deconstruct
them. Friedman links this experimental poetics of drama to the innovations in
Lope’s El castigo sin venganza and El caballero de Olmedo, and to Cervantes’s
subsequent deconstruction of narrative form in Don Quijote. By highlighting the
play’s meta-artistic qualities rather than its Aristotelian or Senecan components,
Friedman offers an alternate set of cue validities that do confirm Numancia’s

central position within the world drama prototype system. He bases this claim
for prototype status on the aesthetics of self-referential literature as an alternate
but equally prestigious form of literary cue validity rather than aligning the play
with conventional tragedies. Studying this work as a metadrama allows new
comparisons to a variety of prestigious authors, from Euripides to Shakespeare
to Pirandello. Friedman’s essay demonstrates the benefits to be derived from
shifting consideration of a text from one gradient system to another, in order to
illuminate overlooked textual elements and to create connections to alternate
paragon texts or forms. Esther Fernández also emphasizes the importance of
metatheatrical aspects in her consideration of La venganza de Tamar. Further

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study of the symbiotic relations between tragic resonances and self-reflexive
drama is likely to be a productive endeavor.

Benjamín Torrico combines several of these approaches in his study of the

siege dramas of Cervantes and Lope de Vega. He follows traditional Aristotelian
paradigms in declaring these plays to be “comedias bélicas” rather than true
tragedies, because the tragic protagonist is a collective force rather than an
individual and because audience empathy cannot be sufficiently engaged toward
characters whose descendants will enjoy spectacular triumphs. In addition,
moments of recognition should occur during tragic rather than comic scenes.
He also notes the metadramatic aspects of these plays, which stage deliberate
subversions of classical norms, “nada puede mostrar mayor conocimiento de
tales preceptos que la capacidad de subvertirlos” (283). Torrico views the
siege dramas as examples of a new post-tragic aesthetic, in which conventional
elements “son más bien utilizados como herramientas para la formación de un
drama nuevo” (282).

Torrico’s conclusion is in accord with many of the other essays in this volume,

which depict Golden Age theater as a forum in which dramatists continually
sought to innovate by modifying and recombining tragic and non-tragic forms in
countless ways. Javier Lorenzo links the double-voiced representation of Raquel
in Judía de Toledo to Girard’s model of the scapegoat whose death restores
communal harmony (318). Daniel Lorca evaluates the mixture of comic and
tragic forces, of death and marriage, in El dueño de las estrellas in order to
designate the work as “casi trágico” (348). Although, as noted above, Hildner
affirms the prominent tragic resonances in En la vida todo es verdad, the subtitle
“tragedia o farsa?” points to generic hybridity as an additional complication.
As Kerry Wilks notes, although generic experimentation was highly popular
with corral audiences, contemporary theater attendees encounter difficulties
when viewing plays that stage jarring juxtapositions of comic and tragic
modes. In particular, her research indicates that the comic and amorous scenes
that dominate the first two acts of El caballero de Olmedo create audience
expectations of a happy ending. Feedback from students reveals that typical
modern-day audiences (as opposed to theater specialists) cannot appreciate
the logic of the tragic dénouement. Clearly, the cue qualities that Aristotle laid
out in his Poetics concerning generic purity still cast a long shadow over the
literary education landscape. Thus, certain types of hybrid drama can evoke a
tepid reception, despite postmodernism’s attempted resuscitation of hybridity
as a new paragon cue quality, complete with the catchy new label of pastiche.

Several essays in this volume offer new paradigms for exploring the tragic

dimensions in marginalized, hybrid dramatic subgenres. De Armas analyzes
Lope’s mythological play, Adonis y Venus, which Lope himself labeled as
a tragedy, but which has not been considered primarily tragic by modern
scholars due to the profusion of lighthearted erotic and pastoral scenes (99-

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100). In order to reconceptualize this play as tragic, de Armas emphasizes
ekphrastic analysis, in particular the references to Titian’s rendition of classical
myth. He cites art historian Thomas Purrfarken, who writes that most of Titian’s
mythological paintings, which are generally viewed as erotic in tone, are, in
fact, tragic representations of the Metamorphoses (100). Purrfarken asserts that
Titian concealed tragic messages beneath a veneer of sexuality, and de Armas
finds the same intent in Lope’s drama. He asserts that “el eros juguetón y el
hado fatídico se entremezclan para crear un nuevo género, una nueva manera
de concebir la tragedia” and aligns the juxtaposition of pastoral interludes and
doomed love with Titian’s chiaroscuro tactics (101-02). De Armas associates
the metamorphoses imposed upon each pair of lovers with the Aristotelian
tragic elements of predestination and peripeteia (107). His essay demonstrates
the value of ekphrastic approaches for the discovery of tragic elements within
mythological drama and can also be analyzed as a continuation of de Armas’s
endeavors to obtain for ekphrastic study a more central position on the literary
theory gradient.

Santiago Fernández Mosquera also affirms the tragic potentialities within

mythological plays. His study of Los tres mayores prodigios rejects the traditional
dictum that a tragic play must close on an unhappy note. Instead, Fernández
Mosquera emphasizes the social function of dramas written for court festivals,
where protocols of ambience dictated jubilant concluding scenes. This study
underlines the significance of the earlier scenes of jealousy and suspicion that
point to honor tragedy and follows Parr’s model in characterizing the play as an
ultimately “serious” work that combines tragic and ludic elements. He repeats
the adjective serious on several occasions in order to establish the modality
that Calderón achieves as distinct from “aquellos malos poetas cortesanos
que componían frívolamente comedias de severo trasfondo trágico” (176).
Fernández Mosquera does not seek an all-encompassing reconsideration for the
gradient status of court festival dramas as a subgenre that incorporates tragic
classical themes. Rather, he proposes a criterion for evaluating the gradient
status of more and less successful uses of the tragic mode within this hybrid
form.

Melchora Romanos studies three plays of the 1630s, in which Rojas Zorrilla

reconceives the Senecan heroines Cleopatra, Lucretia, Procne, and Philomela.
Romanos characterizes these plays as “reconversiones” because the addition
of comic characters and amorous subplots leads to an entirely new model of
generic plurality, which she deems “comedia heroica” (146). She views this
new mode of serious drama as a specific response to the quandary dramatists
faced in this decade: audience interest in classical tragedy had reawakened,
but with scant tolerance for the monogeneric plots and horrific violence that
had sunk the tragedies of Virués and his colleagues a half-century earlier (149).
Romanos affirms heroic comedy as an effective way for Rojas Zorrilla to update

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classical tragedy in response to the tastes of a specific historical moment. Like
many other articles in this volume, Romanos’s contribution clears the path
for reconsidering the status of currently marginal or hybrid subgenres by
positioning them on the tragic gradient scale. All of these essays highlight the
importance of continued study of generic innovation in both canonical and
marginal texts, and confirm the potential of prototype theories to enrich genre
study.

Romanos’s essay also points to the other major trend within this volume,

which entails associating tragedy with the politics of court and empire
during the Hapsburg era. Over the course of the past three decades, we have
witnessed a major recalibration within the gradient systems of all forms and
periods of literature, including early modern dramatic texts across the European
continent. The emergence of ideologically oriented approaches to textuality,
such as feminism, postcolonialism, and various forms of materialism, has altered
the gradient structure, such that cue validity is now granted to plot elements
or characters that appear to offer “oppositional” perspectives on social power
relations and the construction of subjectivity. In the early years of this movement,
new theories of tragedy emerged; Raymond Williams’s Modern Tragedy (1966)
was followed by studies of early modern English drama such as Dollimore’s
Radical Tragedy (1984) and Catherine Belsey’s The Subject of Tragedy (1991).
Then after a decadelong fallow period, Eagleton’s Sweet Violence appeared in
2003. In addition to the reconsiderations of Aristotelian criteria discussed above,
Eagleton also advances the notion of tragedy as an articulation of ideological
paradigm shifts. In Sweet Tragedy, he describes tragedy as

an essentially transitional form, the fruit neither of
cosmos nor chaos. It is the product neither of faith
nor doubt, but of what one might call sceptical faith.
It may spring, for example, from the clash between
a remembered sense of value and what seems a
predatory, degenerate present. Tragic disenchantment
is possible because idealism still is. Or it may dramatize
the deadlock between the asphyxiating burden of the
past and a wistful striving for the future, between
which the present is squeezed to death. (45)

Eagleton also asserts that “tragedy springs not from violating a stable order,
but from that order being itself caught up in a complex transitional crisis”
(143). Here, Eagleton develops a line of thought about tragedy’s potentially
oppositional ideological dimensions, previously offered in Jean-Pierre Vernant
and Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s studies of Athenian tragedy and the British-focused
studies of Williams (which he cites in the text) and Dollimore (relegated to a
footnote).

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Over the past two decades, ideological readings of canonical Spanish

authors have earned paragon status within Hispanism; the MLA book prizes
awarded to George Mariscal and William Childers are one small example of this
trend. Thus, scholars who seek to improve the gradient status of early modern
tragic works now have a new set of ideologically oriented cues to address.
This new approach has been particularly important for reconsiderations of
sixteenth-century works that have historically occupied a gradient position that
is the polar opposite of mixed genre comedias: no one has ever doubted that
they are tragedies. They have been marginalized, however, as too Senecan, too
derivative, and dramatically unrewarding. The shift in emphasis allows several
scholars in the volume to stake new claims concerning the status of neglected
and peripheral authors.

Alfredo Hermenegildo has dedicated his entire career to the revalorization

of sixteenth-century tragedy, publishing half a dozen books on this topic. While
his earliest work devoted scant attention to ideological concerns, the essay in
the Tragedia áurea volume provides an extended consideration. Hermenegildo
explores the critical depiction of Spanish imperialism and absolutism within
the plays of Cristóbal de Virués, Lupercio Leonardo de

Argensola, and Gabriel

Lobo Lasso de la Vega, emphasizing the marginalized subjectivities of these
writers who hailed from peripheral locales rather than the court metropolis. He
asserts that these provincial authors “denuncian la presencia de una autoridad
política mal ejercida, de un monarca convertido en sangriente tirano” and
links their critique to the factionalism that produced revolts in Aragón and
the Alpujarras (30). Hermenegildo argues that these oppositional viewpoints
were a significant factor in the unfavorable reception that the plays received at
the moment of their initial production, in addition to the aesthetics of excess
(29). This essay offers a convincing case for enhancing the gradient position
of an entire group of plays and authors, by linking the oft-maligned Senecan
modality of violent, moralizing drama with esteemed contemporary discourses
of “radical tragedy.” Enrique García Santo-Tomás uses similar tactics to make
his case for reconsidering one specific Renaissance author’s gradient position,
beginning with his suggestive title, “Virués, nuestro contemporáneo.” Santo-
Tomás links biographical details of Virués’s achievement as a real-life military
hero with his authorial condemnations of the brutal military practices of his
day. This essay, like Hermenegildo’s, associates the Senecan aesthetic of horror
tragedy with the politics of the era. Santo-Tomás affirms that Virués dramatizes
the excesses of warfare as practiced at this moment in hopes of identifying “un
nuevo paradigma

de lo nacional y lo masculino que suponga un punto medio

entre estas conductas extremas, a un nuevo tipo de soldado portador de un
mínimo de ejemplaridad, profesional pero humano en el trato al enemigo” (50).
Awareness of the politics that underlie Virués’s chosen poetic tactics enable us
to reconceptualize “estas tragedias aparentemente desconectadas del presente

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en documentos de gran actualidad” (52). In the twentieth century, Francisco

Ruiz Ramón and others brought forth a revalorization of Calderonian tragedy
by demonstrating his relevance within the gradient status of that moment. This
new vision of Virués offers an equally compelling argument for perceiving
the sixteenth-century tragedian as an ideological voice in harmony with the
socioaesthetic concerns of our twenty-first century moment.

Ignacio López-Alemany continues the exploration of ideology in sixteenth-

century tragedy. He focuses his critical lens on a single play, Virués’s La gran
Semíramis. One common tactic among scholars that put forth a new vision
of tragedy or of a specific play is to offer a new and unexpected candidate
for the role of tragic protagonist; this essay proposes assigning such a label
to the privado Celabo in place of the eponoymous queen. Once the focus
shifts to this courtier, it is possible to read the play according to Eagleton’s
paradigm of tragedy as the dramatization of cultural crisis. The moral dilemmas
that Celabo faces incarnate Eagleton’s model of tragic disjunction, “entre el
cálculo prudente y la sinceridad” (243). This vantage point emphasizes Celabo’s
role as the ethical catalyst that leads spectators to anagnorisis concerning court
cultures that nurture corruption and injustice, both in ancient Assyria and in
Virués’s own moment (248). López-Alemany emphasizes that this play is no
mechanical reiteration of classical tropes. The conflict Virués’s stages is not
depicted as the agent for a predestined fall, but rather as the workings of a
specific political configuration in need of reform.

In her essay in the collection, Margaret Greer also employs Eagleton’s

paradigm in her study of the tragic dimensions of Biblical drama. She refutes
the traditional notion that a Christian nation could not produce genuine tragedy
and asserts that, between 1588 and 1659, “la tragedia en España adquirió fuerza
en proporción inversa a la pérdida del dominio [global]” (118). Greer pointedly
rejects formalist approaches to Aristotelian tragedy. Rather than study iconic
tragic reactions such as pity and empathy, she highlights instead the tragic
aspects of the social forces that produce human suffering. Greer proposes that
in Tirso’s and Calderón’s renditions of the House of David motif,

audiences are

invited to draw parallels to the way in which their own social world is marked
by sexual transgression and political violence, a tragic cycle with no end in
sight for Jerusalem or Madrid (128). This analysis draws upon insights Greer
developed in two previous essays on imperialism and historical tragedy, both
published in 2005.

The three essays on Virués and his contemporaries in the volume offer

a compelling new vision of sixteenth-century tragedy as a politically engaged
dramatic medium, and thus as worthy not only of grudging inclusion within
the tragic canon but also of moving from the margins to the center of the
Spanish tragic gradient. These essays, and that of Greer, also validate the utility
of Eagleton’s recent study and of the earlier ideological visions of tragedy upon

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which he builds. The representation of extreme horror and violence, linked
to denunciations of political injustice, can be seen as a proto-Brechtian call
to awareness on the part of aureísta dramatists who sought to intervene
in chaotic political worlds. George Peale’s recent study of tragic form in El
caballero de Olmedo (2011) and Melveena McKendrick’s article on honor
drama (2000) also offer analyses of Brechtian elements in early modern tragedy;
a combination of the Brechtian and materialist approaches traced here could be
very enlightening.

The final essay in the volume is María Mercedes Carrión’s study of the

unique nature of (domestic) violence staged in honor tragedy. I use the word
“staged” ironically, for as this study reveals, Mencía’s death has been presented
infrequently, both in the early modern corral and the contemporary playhouse.
As the essay’s title indicates, Mencia’s invisibility is particularly noteworthy
because El médico de su honra is among the most-studied central plays within
the comedia canon, a veritable “piedra de toque” (432). Why this discrepancy
between the gradient systems of the classroom and the theater? In her response
to this quandary, Carrión brings to bear studies of gender and scopophilia, as
well as the materialist approaches to tragedy cited above, in order to render
visible Mencia’s agency as a tragic protagonist. The essay also insists on the
tragic nature of domestic violence. Citing Eagleton’s model, Carrión makes
deliberate links between literary and embodied forms of spousal abuse and
suffering, highlighting the cultural norms that erase or silence them (443-45). In
any era, to name specific authors or characters as our contemporaries signifies
that we grant them paragon status. Where earlier generations of scholars
employed a gradient system in which the most prized Siglo de Oro authors
were depicted as contemporaries because of a shared vision of human nature,
Carrión and several other authors included in this volume offer an alternate
gradient system. Here, this privileged status is claimed for those tragedians who
purportedly share a vision concerning the need to highlight social injustice.
This modification of the tragic prototype scale contributes to the large-scale
and ongoing reconsideration of the status of ideological studies of gender, race,
class,

and power as represented in all forms of cultural texts and media.

This highly comprehensive volume tackles nearly all of the important

dramatic texts and theoretical issues that are deemed worthy of interest for the
study of the tragic at this current moment. The one notable absence concerns
the tragic corpus of Luis Vélez de Guevara; an essay by George Peale concerning
the insights gained over his long years of editing these works (such as that
published in Bulletin of the Comediantes in 2009) or a study that takes into
account Peale’s work on this author would have been a welcome addition.

Across the Tragedia áurea anthology, as well as in the other recent studies

of tragedy that this essay has considered, an international group of scholars
employ a variety of criteria in order to reconsider the generic status of hybrid

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dramatic works or proclaim the merit of currently marginal tragedies so that
they might be admitted into the inner sanctum of the tragic canon. Many essays
emphasize the power of tragic resonances in hybrid plays, while others assert
the relevance of neglected tragedies. These reconsiderations often entail a
recalibration of the relative merits of Athenian and Roman tragic cue qualities,
in light of the ideological and aesthetic possibilities inherent in Senecan tragic
practices. The center of any gradient scale is, perforce, limited in size; even
if the center were currently vacant, not all of the plays affirmed here could
be accommodated. Understanding of the prototype effect upon classification
systems provides a new and important perspective, one that helps us to
understand both the innovations and continuities concerning tragedy theory,
and allows us to anticipate future directions. Current trends in the modification
of literary prototypes, both within Hispanism and the broader scope of literary
studies, lead me to suggest that studies aligned with postmodern aesthetics,
such as explorations of metatragedy and experimental generic combinations,
will garner attention. In addition, approaches that bring together genre theory
and explorations of identity and ideology are likely to have an impact on the
future of Hispanism, recalibrating the gradient status of tragedies and hybrid
dramas alike.

Note

1. See Mancing, “Prototypes of Genre in Cervantes’ Novelas ejemplares,” for an analysis of how the

prototype effect impacts the classification and reputation of the various novelas.

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