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The dramatic works covered range from medieval materializations of Hell to the Golden Age plays of Lope de vega, Tirso de Molina, and Calderon de la Barca, to modern stage works by Valle-Inclan, Garcia Lorca, Casona, Miras, and a number of significant Afro-Brazilian and Caribbean dramatists.

"e;The evil that men do"e; has been chronicled for thousands of years on the European stage, and perhaps nowhere else is human fear of our own evil more detailed than in its personifications in theater. Early writers used theater to communicate human experiences and to display reverence for the gods governing daily life. Playwrights from Euripides onward sought inspiration from this interplay between the worldly and the occult, using human belief in the divine to govern characters' actions within a dramatic arena. The constant adherence to the supernatural, despite changing religious ideologies over the centuries, testifies to a deep and continuing belief in the ability of a higher power to interfere in human life. Stages of Evil is the first book to examine the representation and relationship of evil and the occult from the prehistoric origins of drama through to the present day. Drawing on examples of magic, astronomy, demonology, possession, exorcism, fairies, vampires, witchcraft, hauntings, and voodoo, author Robert Lima explores how theater shaped American and European perceptions of the occult and how the dramatic works studied here reflect society back upon itself at different points in history. From representations of Dionysian rites in ancient Greece, to the Mouth of Hell in the Middle Ages, to the mystical cabalistic life of the Hasidic Jews, to the witchcraft and magic of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, Lima traces the recurrence of supernatural motifs in pivotal plays and performance works of the Western tradition. Considering numerous myths and cultural artifacts, such as the "e;wild man,"e; he describes the evolution and continual representation of supernatural archetypes on the modern stage. He also discusses the sociohistorical implications of Christian and pagan representations of evil and the theatrical creativity that occultism has engendered. Delving into his own theatrical, literary, folkloric, and travel experiences to enhance his observations, Lima assays the complex world of occultism and examines diverse works of Western theater and drama. A unique and comprehensive bibliography of European and American plays concludes the study and facilitates further research into the realm of the social and literary impact of the occult.

Salvator Rosa (1615--1673) was a colorful and controversial Italian painter, talented musician, a notable comic actor, a prolific correspondent, and a successful satirist and poet. His paintings, especially his rugged landscapes and their evocation of the sublime, appealed to Romantic writers, and his work was highly influential on several generations of European writers. James S. Patty analyzes Rosa's tremendous influence on French writers, chiefly those of the nineteenth century, such as Stendhal, Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo, George Sand, and Theophile Gautier. Arranged in chronological order, with numerous quotations from French fiction, poetry, drama, art criticism, art history, literary history, and reference works, Salvator Rosa in French Literature forms a narrative account of the reception of Rosa's life and work in the world of French letters.

This volume is a sequel to Four Comedies of Calderon (1980), which was hailed by reviewers as superb, faithful, and actable. The three comedies in the present volume are generally counted among Calderon's masterpieces: Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar (A House with Two Doors Is Difficult to Guard);

The Book of the Knight Zifar (or Cifar), Spain's first novel of chivalry, is the tale of a virtuous but unfortunate knight who has fallen from grace and must seek redemption through suffering and good deeds.

In this study, Merle L. Perkins links individual freedom with national power in offering a close reading of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's major texts. He sees in Rousseau's thought an extreme tension and interdependence between the idiosyncrasy of nonconforming character and an almost obsessive concern with the external pressures operating on the state.

Distinguishing figural or typological allegory -- a method adapted from the Christian exegesis of the Old Testament -- from the broader Hellenistic concept of allegory, this book examines its use in representative poems of early Hispanic literature.

This collection is the first full-length literary study on Machaut, France's leading poet and musician of the 14th century. Here, author William Calin examines the works for their intrinsic merit and for their historical importance in influencing many writers, most notably Chaucer.

Spain's Golden Age, the seventeenth century, left the world one great legacy, the flower of its dramatic genius - the comedia. A History of Spanish Golden Age Drama presents the history of the comedia, with special emphasis on critical approaches developed during the past ten years.

Marianne Shapiro treats different traditional feminine roles such as wife, lover, and mother, and places Beatrice in the latter group. The problem of woman is studied within the general context of medieval literature.

Sponsler illuminates the role of women during this interesting period by exploring their portrayal in literature. Women in the Medieval Spanish Epic and Lyric Traditions examines the various ways in which women were portrayed in the formative years of medieval society, as well as the development of these views as new social mores evolved.

Kotin analyzes the tales for the modern reader, historically, generically, structurally, and in terms of their human significance. Inscribed in a tradition of short narrative forms in late medieval and early Renaissance France, these tales remake or recast traditional narrative patterns into new forms.

The Nouvelles Recreations et Joyeaux Devis of Bonaventure des Periers are here translated for the first time into modern English. The translators have been successful in retaining the vitality of this important French Renaissance satirist, turning his colloquial sixteenth-century French into equally colloquial and lively American.

Don Juan Manuel, nephew of King Alfonso X, The Wise, knew well the appeal of exempla (moralized tales), which he believed should entertain if they were to provide ways and means for solving life's problems.

The literary cult of Astraea persisted in the sixteenth century as writers saw in Elizabeth I of England the imperial Astraea who would lead mankind to peace through universal rule. This and other late flowerings of the Astraea myth should not be taken as the final phases of her history.

The sheer volume of prolific Spanish novelist and playwright Benito Perez Galdos's literary production has rendered overall assessment of his body of work all but impossible. These episodios, Dendle contests, are artistically superior to the earlier volumes and offer a unique opportunity to establish the ideological profile of the mature Galdos.

Written in 1929--1930, when Federico Garcia Lorca was visiting Columbia University, Poet in New York stands as one of the great Waste Land poems of the 20th century.

The later novels of Machado de Assis -- notably Dom Casmurro and Esau and Jacob -- are well known in this country, but the earlier novels have never been translated.

Les Soeurs Vatard, described by its author as a "lewd but exact" slice of life, was J.-K.

Along with Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco, Fernando Arrabal is a major exponent of the Theater of the Absurd. In this study Arrabal's plays are seen as a contemporary expression of a festive form of theater that flourished during the Middle Ages and that had its roots in the drama of Aeschylus and Aristophanes.

The libro de los buenos proverbios, a key work in the medieval didactic tradition, is presented here for the first time in a western translation.

Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi (1698--1782) was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.

After presenting the biographical and historical context of Manrique's poetry, Dominguez examines the poet's love lyrics, describing the large fund of commonplaces and forms that Manrique's verses share with those of other poets of his age.

The first non-French national to be elected to the Academie francaise, Green authored several novels ( The Dark Journey, The Closed Garden, Moira, Each Man in His Darkness, and the Dixie trilogy), a four-volume autobiography ( The Green Paradise, The War at Sixteen, Love in America and Restless Youth), and his famous Diary.

The last of four novels that preceded Machado de Assis's famous trilogy of realistic masterpieces, Iaia Garcia belongs to what critics have called the Brazilian author's "romantic" phase.

The twelve essays in this fiorilegio of the work of Otis H.

Jorge de Montemayor's great pastoral novel La Diana (1559), one of the fountainheads of Spanish Renaissance literature, has often been regarded as a work written merely to amuse an effete courtly world.

In the symbolic language of ballads, a lady's costly dress tells of the beauty of the body beneath it or of the wearer's happiness; In focusing on individual motifs as they appear in different ballads, different languages, and different periods, Rogers proves the existence of a reliable lingua franca of symbolism in European balladry.