Cervantes’ Oblique Poetics of Theater: La entretenida

Abstract

This article presents a reading of Cervantes’s La Entretenida. It illustrates his mastery and experimental theater as he refuses to conform to the new trends of the comedia, and to the demands of the vulgo. It theorizes how Cervantes interjects his own experimental precepts to confront those of the comedia. His aim is to transform them into his vision of theater by taking the conceptual model in another direction