PAU Dramatic Literature (Extremadura) flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Esperpento

Valle-Inclán's genre deforming characters and situations through 'espejos cóncavos'; mixes the tragic and the grotesque to expose Spanish decadence. Luces de bohemia (1920/1924) is its founding example, with esperpento defined in scene 12.

La casa de Bernarda Alba

Lorca's 1936 prose tragedy, premiered 1945: eight years of mourning confine five daughters under Bernarda's tyranny. The house is a prison, and Adela's suicide closes the play with 'silencio'.

Bodas de sangre

Lorca's 1933 'tragedia rural' in verse and prose: the Bride elopes with Leonardo on her wedding day, ending in the deaths of the two men. Green symbolises fertility and death.

Historia de una escalera

Buero Vallejo's 1949 debut, Premio Lope de Vega. Three generations of neighbours share a Madrid staircase across thirty years, dramatising class stagnation and failed hopes in post-war Spain.

Escuadra hacia la muerte

Alfonso Sastre's 1953 'drama de denuncia': a punished squad kills its abusive corporal during a war rehearsal. Premiered under censorship, it launched Spanish social theatre of protest.

La fundación

Buero Vallejo's 1974 play: the audience sees a comfortable 'fundación' that is actually a prison cell. The revelation enacts the protagonist's political awakening and is a classic case of dramatic irony.

¡Ay, Carmela!

Sanchis Sinisterra's 1987 tragicomedy: two Republican entertainers are captured in the Civil War and forced to perform for Francoist troops. Uses metatheatre and irony to interrogate memory and performance.

Teatro soterrado

Underground Spanish theatre of the 1960s-70s (Arrabal, Nieva, Riaza, Martínez Mediero) that circumvented Francoist censorship; often premiered abroad and used allegory, ritual and the grotesque.

Generación del 27

Spanish poets and playwrights (Lorca, Alberti, Cernuda, Aleixandre) blending avant-garde (surrealism, greguería) with popular tradition; Lorca's 'teatro imposible' (El público) belongs to this experimental line.

Generación del 98

Writers responding to the 1898 Desastre (loss of Cuba and the Philippines), preoccupied with Spanish identity and regeneracionismo. Valle-Inclán's esperpento and Benavente's social comedy inherit this critical spirit.

Francoist censorship

State control of theatre from 1939 (Ley de Prensa 1938, revised 1966) that banned political or moral criticism. It forced authors into allegory, historical distancing, or premieres abroad until its abolition in 1977.

Centro Dramático Nacional

Spain's national theatre company, created in 1978 during the transition to democracy; together with the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico (1986) it institutionalised public theatre after the end of censorship.

Los intereses creados

Benavente's 1907 comedy using commedia dell'arte masks (Leandro, Crispín, Polichinela) and a play-within-a-play prologue to satirise social hypocrisy and the power of vested interests.

Luces de bohemia

Valle-Inclán's esperpento (1920/1924): the blind poet Max Estrella's final night through Madrid, structured in fifteen scenes. It deforms politics, literature and poverty into grotesque tragedy.

Dramatic conflict types

Individual versus society (Bernarda), versus fate (Bodas de sangre), versus self (Yerma), or class conflict (Escuadra hacia la muerte). Naming the type anchors the interpretation of any excerpt.

Espacio dramático vs. escénico

Espacio escénico is the visible set; espacio dramático is the offstage world evoked in dialogue. In Bernarda Alba the house is the visible prison, while the street and well are offstage threats.

Tiempo dramático vs. escénico

Tiempo dramático is the fictional duration (three years in Bodas de sangre); tiempo escénico is the performance duration. Tiempo histórico is the period evoked by the work.

Didascalias

Stage directions. Explicit ones are written in the text (setting, movement, tone); implicit ones are embedded in dialogue. They may be objetivas (setting only) or subjetivas (mood, symbol).

Dramatic irony

A convention where the audience knows something a character does not, as when spectators see Buero's 'fundación' as a prison before the characters do. Distinct from verbal irony, which says the opposite.

Soliloquio vs. monólogo

A soliloquy is spoken alone onstage, voicing inner thought; a monologue is an extended speech delivered with other characters present. Both are accepted theatrical conventions, not natural speech.

Aparte

A short speech addressed to the audience and supposedly unheard by other characters onstage. It creates complicity and irony, and is common in comedy from the Golden Age onward.

Metateatro

Theatre about theatre: play-within-a-play, direct address, rehearsal scenes, or characters aware of being watched. In ¡Ay, Carmela! the forced performance itself becomes the metatheatrical device.

Tragedia vs. tragicomedia

Tragedy ends in inevitable downfall and catharsis; tragicomedy mixes tragic and comic registers with an open or ambiguous ending. Modern Spanish drama mostly occupies the tragicomic middle.

Sainete

A one-act costumbrista comic piece with popular Madrid speech and types, perfected by Arniches. It is the comic ancestor of later popular-register realism such as Bajarse al moro.

Teatro del absurdo

Post-1945 movement (Ionesco, Beckett) rejecting linear plot and logical dialogue to express existential meaninglessness. Its influence reaches Spanish experimental authors of the 1960s-70s.

Tres unidades

Classical norms of unity of action, place and time. They are conventions, not laws: Lope's Arte nuevo (1609) explicitly broke them, and modern Spanish drama ignores them freely.

Commentary opening move

Begin by locating the excerpt (work, act, scene, position in the plot) and stating a thesis about its function. Never open with plot summary or biography of the author.

Quoting in commentary

Integrate short quotations grammatically into your own sentence, mark cuts with '[...]', and cite act or scene. Every quotation must support a claim about conflict, character or theme.

Cohesion connectors

Use además or asimismo for addition, sin embargo for contrast, puesto que for cause, por consiguiente for consequence, and por ejemplo for exemplification. Vary them; repetition weakens the essay.

Literary present tense

Analyse events in the present: 'Bernarda exige', not 'exigió'. The literary present keeps the analysis immediate and avoids shifting tenses mid-paragraph, a common correctness penalty.

Dequeísmo y queísmo

Dequeísmo adds 'de' wrongly ('pienso de que'); queísmo omits it wrongly ('me acuerdo que'). Correct forms: 'pienso que', 'me acuerdo de que'. Examiners penalise both in written expression.

Symbolic stagecraft in Lorca

Colour and objects carry meaning: green for fertility and death in Bodas de sangre, white and black for mourning in Bernarda Alba, and the knife, horse and well as recurring symbols of desire and violence.