Comedia, or, Theater as Such . Language, Figures and  Meanings of Spanish Golden Age Comedy

The Spanish Golden Age Comedia was a brilliant moment in the History of Theatre, some of whose innovations still survive in our understanding of theatre today. In this theatrical system, every play is called a comedia, the genre then being typified by an adjective. Why is this so? Why, at least in terminology, does tragedy seem not to exist in this context? There are dramaturgical reasons, but also ideological reasons concerning the societal and religious context of the time. What then is the deep meaning of comedia?

Dr. María J. Ortega Máñez is a postdoctoral researcher and translator. She obtained a Master of Philosophy and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Paris-Sorbonne University and held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Vienna and at KU Leuven. Her research is mainly focused on the relationship between philosophy and theatre, which she has been analysing through fields of study such as theories of literature, aesthetics, ancient Greek studies, baroque Spanish theatre and Spanish 20th-century philosophy.

This public forum is intended as a meeting-point where citizens, artists and scholars can re-examine the practice of theatre as radical–rooted in the abundance of human expression.