Cultural Politics of Twentieth-Century Spanish Theater

Carey Kasten is assistant professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Fordham University.

• Acknowledgments Introduction: Autonomizing the Calderonian Auto SacramentalSection I: Tradition Revised: The Auto Sacramental in the Early Twentieth CenturyChapter One: The Avant-Garde Rediscovery of the AutoReviving the Calderonian Auto: An Avant-Garde Project Rewriting the Auto: The Aesthetic Turns Political Chapter Two: Francoism and the Auto as Political Mouthpiece Restoring the Auto: From the Battlefield to a National Theater Recalling the Fascist Auto: Miguel Hernández and Gonzalo Torrente Ballester Search for AutoridadSection II: Tradition Overthrown: The Auto Sacramental in the Post-Franco Era Chapter Three: Subverting Tradition: Francisco Nieva and His Sacred IrreverenceChapter Four: Emerging from Darkness: National and Theatrical Revision in Jesús Campos García’s A ciegasChapter Five: The Auto Industry: Anti-Commercialism and the Plays of Ernesto CaballeroConclusion Works Cited About the Author

This book is a valuable addition to Spanish Drama Studies. Even though Spanish Cultural and Cinema Studies are producing a solid and steady body of work that deals with different aspects of Spanish cultural history, Drama Studies is still a field highly neglected in the area of Literary Studies in general and in the field of the Hispanism in the United States in particular. The Cultural Politics of Twentieth-Century Spanish Theater comes to fill a void in the study of the relationship of culture, ideology and politics in the problematic Spanish twentieth century. . . .The book is very well written; it is clear, concise and straight to the point. Furthermore, it is very pleasant and enjoyable to read. Kasten's chronological approach helps the reader not just to understand the evolution of the auto during the twentieth century but also the ideological transformation of a country which evolved from the democratic experience of the Second Republic to the Civil War and the subsequent fascist dictatorship to the return to democracy in the late 1970s. . . .To sum up, Kasten's book is an indispensable tool for anyone approaching the history of Spanish theatre. Her originality, her thorough analysis and her comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach represent an extraordinary contribution to the field of Spanish Cultural Studies.