Pedro Calderón de la Barca was a Spanish dramatist, poet, and writer. He is known as one of the most distinguished poets and writers of the Spanish Golden Age, especially for the many verse dramas he wrote for the theatre. Calderón has been termed "the Spanish Shakespeare", the national poet of Spain, and one of the greatest poets and playwrights in the history of world literature.
The word ekphrasis, or ecphrasis, comes from the Greek for the written description of a work of art produced as a rhetorical or literary exercise, often used in the adjectival form ekphrastic. It is a vivid, often dramatic, verbal description of a visual work of art, either real or imagined. Thus, "an ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art." In ancient times, it might refer more broadly to a description of any thing, person, or experience. The word comes from the Greek ἐκ ek and φράσις phrásis, 'out' and 'speak' respectively, and the verb ἐκφράζειν ekphrázein, 'to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name'.
José María Andrés Fernando Lezama Lima was a Cuban writer, poet and essayist. He is considered one of the most influential figures in Cuban and Latin American literature. His novel Paradiso is one of the most important works in Spanish and one of the best novels of the 20th Century according to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
Benito María de los Dolores Pérez Galdós was a Spanish realist novelist. He was a leading literary figure in 19th-century Spain, and some scholars consider him second only to Miguel de Cervantes in stature as a Spanish novelist.
Emilia Pardo Bazán y de la Rúa-Figueroa, Countess of Pardo Bazán was a Spanish novelist, journalist, literary critic, poet, playwright, translator, editor and professor. Her naturalism and descriptions of reality, as well as her feminist ideas embedded in her work, made her one of the most influential and best-known female writers of her era. Her ideas about women's rights in education also made her a prominent feminist figure.
Life Is a Dream is a Spanish-language play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. First published in 1636, in two different editions, the first in Madrid and a second one in Zaragoza. Don W. Cruickshank and a number of other critics believe that the play can be dated around 1630, thus making Calderón's most famous work a rather early composition. It is a philosophical allegory regarding the human situation and the mystery of life. The play has been described as "the supreme example of Spanish Golden Age drama". The story focuses on the fictional Segismundo, Prince of Poland, who has been imprisoned in a tower by his father, King Basilio, following a dire prophecy that the prince would bring disaster to the country and death to the King. Basilio briefly frees Segismundo, but when the prince goes on a rampage, the king imprisons him again, persuading him that it was all a dream.
María de Zayas y Sotomayor wrote during Spain's Golden Age of literature. She is considered by a number of modern critics as one of the pioneers of literary feminism, while others consider her simply a well-accomplished baroque author. The female characters in de Zayas's stories were used as vehicles to enlighten readers about the plight of women in Spanish society, or to instruct them in proper ways to live their lives.
Bárbara Louise Mujica is an American scholar, novelist, short story writer, literary critic and an academic. She is an Emeritus Professor of Spanish at Georgetown University. Her novels include Frida (2001), Sister Teresa (2007), and Miss del Río (2022).
Francisco Moreno-Fernández is a Spanish dialectologist and sociolinguist.
Hispanism is the study of the literature and culture of the Spanish-speaking world, principally that of Spain and Hispanic America. It may also entail studying Spanish language and cultural history in the United States and in other presently or formerly Spanish-speaking countries in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, such as Equatorial Guinea and the former Spanish East Indies.
The Phantom Lady is a play by Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca. It was written and performed in 1629 and was published for the first time in the Primera parte de comedias de don Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1636).
The Widow from Valencia is a play written by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega, who is considered part of the Spanish Golden Age of literature. The play was written circa 1600 as a result of Lope's visit to the city with his new patron, the future Count of Lemos. They were there for the marriage of the King Philip III with Margaret of Austria. However, the play was not published until 1620 in the fifteenth part of his Comedias, where it is dedicated to Marcia Leonarda, that is to say, to Lope’s beloved Marta de Nevares.
Fenisa's Hook is a play written by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega, who is considered part of the Spanish Golden Age of literature. It was first published in 1617 in the eighth part of Lope de Vega's Comedias. Based on the tenth tale of the eighth day of Boccaccio’s Decameron, it has been called a picaresque play, works that exhibit an uncharacteristic moral freedom. It focuses on merchants, the circulation of bodies and merchandise, and the seductive power of art. Boccaccio's tale is about a trickster who is tricked. Lope uses Boccaccio's story for the main plot of his play, where Fenisa, a courtesan in Palermo attempts to woo the rich merchant Lucindo in order to gain his riches. A secondary plot includes Dinarda who is dressed as a man and has come to Palermo in search of the man who seduced her and left her behind. Fenisa ends up falling for this Dinarda who is disguised as don Juan de Lara. While Fenisa is able to trick Lucindo the first time around, he comes back to Sicily a second time and this time he tricks her. In the end, Dinarda finds and marries her Albano, while Fenisa is left without a spouse and without money.
Ottmar Ette is Professor of Romance languages and Comparative literature at University of Potsdam.
Ruth Fine is Salomon and Victoria Cohen Professor of Spanish and Latin-American literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Blanca López de Mariscal or Blanca Guadalupe López Morales is a Professor emeritus and researcher in literature at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey, México.
El pintor de su deshonra, sometimes known as El pintor, is a 1640s play of the Spanish Golden Age theatre by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. It is one of the author's three famous wife-murder plays, along with A secreto agravio, secreta venganza and El médico de su honra, where private revenge of an aggrieved husband, in this case a painter by the name of Juan Roca, ultimately becomes very public.
José Rafael Valles Calatrava is a Spanish researcher and professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the University of Almería. His interests lie in the fields of narratalogy, semiotics and crime fiction. He has published extensively on those fields and has written books such as Diccionario de teoría de la narrativa [Dictionary of Narrative Theory] and Teoría de la narrativa [Narrative Theory]. Valles Calatrava has taught at the University of Almería and the University of Granada since 1989.
María Luisa Artecona de Thompson was a Paraguayan poet and playwright. She was known for her work for children and in particular her anthology of writing for Paraguayan children.
Mabel Moraña is an intellectual and academic who has worked internationally in the fields of literary and cultural criticism in Latin America, being the author of numerous interdisciplinary publications that articulate perspectives on philosophy, anthropology, history, and cultural theory. Currently she is the William H. Gass Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also the Director of the Latin American Studies Program at the same institution. Her research work spans from the Colonial Period, particularly focusing on the Baroque, to the present. Her main contributions are in the areas of the study of national cultures, modernity, postcolonialism, and the history of ideas. Moraña has published articles and books on Andean cultures, Mexican literature and culture, as well as transnational issues. She has contributed to the critical development of categories such as the monstrous, migration, violence, issues related to gender, race and ethnicity, critiques of modernity, Postcolonial Theory, among other topics.
