Secrets and Secrecy in Calderon´s Comedies and in Spanish Golden Age Culture

This project will explore Spanish Baroque culture and its public enactment of secrecy. In 1642, as war raged, the population starved and the economy tottered, the court of Madrid kept entertaining and enchanting its subjects with displays of royal power and baroque splendour. Behind the scenes, however, effective political and military operations were carried out in spheres of secrecy, where secretaries, confessors and secret agents held sway. As social life was marked by a strict separation of the publicly known and the secretly done, the intermediate space of secret communication became all the more relevant and was constantly struggled over. Secrecy itself became a topic of major public concern and, paradoxically, was dealt with in the most public location one could think of: the theatrical stage, the epitome of a culture based on visual effects and public showing. It was in the theatre that the complex relationship between the known and the unknown was reflected, modelled, tested. Dramatic effects arose from the enactment of human configurations that revolved around the safeguard, the communication and the revelation of secrets. In his comedies of intrigue, Caldern constantly explored the social implications and secrets of secrecy. His plays both mirror and participate in a culture tending towards a teatralizacin of life and power, the well orchestrated exhibition of the concealment of the inner cores of power, and thus symbolically enhanced these hidden areas. In 1642, Caldern created a comedy of secrecy out of the oxymoron secreto a voces ("open secret"). The play deals with court secrets, with conspiracy and with female wit that preserves the secret of love by means of encoded communication. Our research project pursues three objectives: A study of secrecy as a core characteristic of Spanish Golden Age culture, on the basis of historiographical studies, sources and cultural theories of secrecy. A study of Calderonian comedies of secrecy in the context of Golden Age theatre. A case study of the comedy El secreto a voces, including a critical edition that also explores the aesthetics of secrecy and the history of early staging in Madrid and Vienna. With this threefold approach we aim at a deeper understanding of both Calderns originality and of the secret patterns of Baroque culture.

As social life was marked by a strict separation of the publicly known and the secretly done, the intermediate space of secret communication became all the more relevant and was constantly debated and contested. Secrecy itself became a topic of major public concern and, paradoxically, was dealt with in the most public location one could think of: the theatrical stage, the epitome of a culture based on visual effects and public showing. It was in the theatre that the complex relationship between the known and the unknown was reflected, modelled, tested. Thus, secrecy turned into a highly self-referential part of court life and into an element of culture and entertainment in its own right.The secret functions as a motor of action and an overall structuring principle in Calderns literary work. Its poetic productivity can be detected in all genres he cultivated and at all levels of meaning: from the construction of plot or the configuration of dramatic space, to the use of metaphors and rhetoric devices which Caldern employed to express the enormous emotional charge of secrecy.The project could make a strong case for the importance of Calderonian comedy in the history of Spanish and European culture. On the other hand, sources from the fields of diplomacy, political theory or cryptography have been used for the interpretation of theatrical texts. Thereby, new research focuses and methods could be proposed and baroque culture could be established as a main topic of research and teaching at the Department of Romance Philology, University of Vienna.As a result, a critical edition of the comedy El secreto a voces (The Open Secret) and numerous studies on secrecy in Calderns work and in Siglo de Oro culture can be offered to the academic community, to students of literature and to professionals of the theatre. Information about the project and its goals and achievements can be gained by accessing Wolfram Aichingers homepage at the University of Vienna.