Juan Ruiz de Alarcón

Comedia scholars  explore the role of homosociality
within individual Siglo de Oro texts. This essay will move beyond the explication of individual texts or authors, in order to examine theimportance of homosocial relations for an entire genre: early modernSpanish comedy. In more than a dozen non-canonical Golden Agecomic plays, the dramatic agon stems from the male protagonist's attempts to reconcile the competing and conflicting demands ofhomosocial and heterosexual bonds. This study will focus upon four representative "homosocial comedies," Tirso's Celos con celos se curan, Ruiz de Alarcon's Ganar amigos and El examen de maridos,and Lope de Vega's La noche de San Juan.
This essay explores  the significance of homosocial ties as the
primary "blocking force" in comedia texts which foreground courtship and marriage.
Source: Hispanic Review, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 521-533Published

Índice
“EL CURIOSO IMPERTINENTE” Y “EL SEMEJANTE A SÍ MISMO”: CERVANTES Y ALARCÓN SOBRE LAS IDENTIDADES HEGEMÓNICAS EN SU TIEMPO
Raquel Serrano González 7
NOVELA, MODERNIDAD Y ENSAYO: UNA APROXIMACIÓN DESDE CARLOS FUENTES
Sebastián Arce Oses  26
LA MEMORIA DE LA INMIGRACIÓN LIBANESA
EN LA LITERATURA MEXICANA CONTEMPORÁNEA
Benedetta Belloni 45
SOBRE LOS ESPACIOS EN EL CAMINO ROJO A SABAIBA
Víctor Alan Ávila Garnica 64
SOBRE LA INSOPORTABLE INTELIGENCIA
Marcos Cortés Guadarrama 75





CREACIÓN LITERARIA
AlINEACIÓN
Juan Carlos Vasquez  77
MISTERIOS
Gabriel Desmar 79

This article is published in the journal: Líneas (Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour), no. 9.
This article seeks to compare different types of filiation such as they are presented on the Spanish Golden Age stage. The first part evokes as a prime example some theatrical representations of the Virgin Mary and the question of her Immaculate Conception and the relationship with the divine. A reduced number of plays from the end of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period give some idea of the representation of the Virgin and the birth of Christ. The study then focusses on some examples of monstrous births, the result of hybrid sexual relationships (zoophilia for the most part), essentially from prose sources. The birth of Merlin, son of a noblewoman and a devil is then briefly discussed. Finally, the article focusses on the theatrical depiction of the birth of the Antichrist as seen by the dramatist Juan Ruiz de Alarcón in the eponymous play.

Juan Ruiz de Alarcón’s trenchant moral didacticism, a salient feature of his 1634 La verdad sospechosa, reflects, as some critics argue, an underlying concern with the wellbeing of his society. In other words, his protagonist’s constant dissimulation negatively reflects proper societal etiquette; as Tristán, don García’s helpless criado summarizes, “quien en las burlas miente, / pierde crédito en las veras” (167). Alarcón’s scrupulous moral standards draw from a deeply didactic strain of Hispanic literature, whose origin can be traced to Juan Manuel’s El conde Lucanor, published three centuries before La verdad sospechosa (1335). This study presupposes that the moral bedrock of Alarcón’s play derives from two separate yet inherently ethical exempla found in El conde Lucanor: “De lo que contesçió al árvol de la mentira” and “De lo que contesçió a un philósopho que por occasion entró en una calle do moravan mala mugeres.” The first exemplum suggests that don García follows a logical progression of deception whereas the second acknowledges the diminished public perception associated with such behavior. By establishing a firm connection between Manuel’s didactic stories and Alarcón’s moralistic play, this presentation opens the possibility for further comparisons between the medieval fabulist and the Early Modern playwright.