As both layman and Franciscan friar, the Catalan writer known as Francesc Moner (ca 1463–1495) is one of the leading exponents of the bilingual (Catalan-Castilian) culture that flourished in Barcelona in the late 1400s. In his approach to Sepultura d’amor (Burial of Love), Moner’s longest poem, Peter Cocozzella focuses on the author’s ingenious version of a kind of parody that desacralizes but does not desecrate the celebration of the funeral Mass. Cocozzella discovers the aspects of Moner’s unconventional idea of a theater based on the dramatics of the monologue and on the transformation of the divine ritual into a human analogue of transubstantiation. This allegorical pattern validates the profile of the masterpiece in question as one of the earliest manifestations of the auto sacramental, the distinctive theatrical genre scripted in the language of Castile. The book includes the text of Sepultura and its translation.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
Chapter I: The Cancionero Background
Chapter II: A Spectacle on Display
Chapter III: The Gestation of Dramatic Modes
Chapter IV: The Dramatization of the Monologue
Chapter V: The Sermon in Dramatic Effects
Chapter VI: Parody as Desacralization
Chapter VII: Dramatization on the Way to Performance
Chapter VIII: Embryonic and Full-Fledged Theatricality
Chapter IX: Stage-Worthy Action: Extrinsic and Intrinsic Dimensions
Chapter X: Visualizing the Stage
Chapter XI: Configuring the Actual Stage: The Pragmatics of the Mise en Scène
Chapter XII: A Religious Theater Newly Fashioned: Semiotic Functions
Conclusion
Appendices
Illustrations
Bibliography
Index
