Purdue University Monographs in Romance Languages (vols. 1–42, 1980–1992)

Criticism of La Regenta has until recently focused on the text's plot as an extraordinarily coherent and convincing fictional world. Stephanie A. Sieburth demonstrates that the devices which produce order in the text are counterbalanced by an equally strong tendency toward entropy of meaning. The narrator is shown to be duplicitous and unreliable in his judgments on characters and events. Without an omniscient narrator, readers must interpret for themselves the complex intertextual structure of the novel. Saints' lives, honor plays, and serial novels each provide partial reflections of Ana Ozores' story. The text becomes a collage of mutually reflecting segments which, like Ana in her moments of self-doubt and madness, ultimately question the function of language and of any overriding interpretation or meaning.

While Calderón's autos portray this teleological view of life with unequaled ingenuity, his comedias lie somewhere on the line of development of European thought and activity between the other-worldiness of orthodox Thomism and the naturalism of which Spinoza's ideas are one example among many. Let us characterize the comedias briefly by stating that the motives which move the dramatic action forward are generally of a teleological nature; that is, they envisage some hypostatized end outside the individual characters. Yet, there are key moments when it becomes apparent to the reader or spectator that these ends have been created and set before the characters by themselves, by the requirements of their social standing in the play, by the manipulating dramatist Calderón, or, in broader terms, by the social climate of the audience for whom these plays were written and performed. Both reason and exalted passions become the preserve of noble blood in Calderón's plays. Whether he is dealing with vengeful husbands, monarchs, usurpers, contemplative men of learning, or saints, the thread of social distinction never disappears. The concern of his characters that they not commit a "low" action, is not simply a Christian concern with avoiding sin. The characters are much more concerned with practicing a virtue which will distinguish them from the vulgar.