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RAMON DEL VALLE-INCLAN'S "RETABLO DE LA AVARICIA, LA LUJURIA Y LA MUERTE": THE ONE-ACT PLAYS (SPAIN, DRAMA)
Abstract
Ramon del Valle-Inclan's Retablo de la avaricia, la lujuria y la muerte consists of five plays, Ligazon, La rosa de papel, El embrujado, La cabeza del Bautista, and Sacrilegio. The four one-act plays are symmetrically positioned before and after the three-act tragedy El embrujado. Although the shorter plays have a close thematic relationship with El embrujado, their condensed form represents a significant departure from Valle-Inclan's previous dramatic practices. Each features a small cast and takes place in a limited time period at a single location. The first and last Retablo plays, Ligazon and Sacrilegio, are subtitled auto para siluetas while the two interior plays, La rosa de papel and La cabeza del Bautista, are each designated as a melodrama para marionetas. These subtitles not only indicate the treatment of the characters (jfiguratively portrayed as shadows or marionettes), but also reveal the plays' fundamental preoccupation with the spiritual dimension of human life. La rosa de papel and La cabeza del Bautista employ the frenzied emotions and flamboyant gestures typical of melodrama while Ligazon and Sacrilegio develop in a quieter ambience with sharp contrasts of light and dark more suitable to the symbolic world of an auto. Despite the use of many of the stylistic elements associated with melodrama and the auto sacramental, however, the Retablo plays avoid the explicit moralizing inherent in these genres to concentrate instead on portraying a world in which human behavior is both shocking and ludicrous. The Retablo plays portray powerful emotional forces unrestrained by the moral or theological framework implicit in melodrama or the auto. Though each play explores a distinct situation, all of them promote an awareness of a frightening transcendent reality, a spontaneous revelation of the irrational and instinctual aspects of humanity. The metaphysical concepts delineated in Valle-Inclan's earlier philosophical treatise, La lampara maravillosa, are dynamically portrayed in the one-act plays of the Retablo, and their intense images and macabre humor make them seem remarkably modern.
Subject Area
Romance literature
Recommended Citation
NICKEL, CATHERINE ANN, "RAMON DEL VALLE-INCLAN'S "RETABLO DE LA AVARICIA, LA LUJURIA Y LA MUERTE": THE ONE-ACT PLAYS (SPAIN, DRAMA)" (1984). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8503438.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8503438