Deception and truth: the use of letters in the comedies of Iriarte and Moratin
Abstract
This study examines the dramatic and
thematic role of staged letters in the neoclassic comedies of Spain's eminent
comediographs Tomás de Iriarte and Leandro Fernández de Moratín. The plays under
consideration include Iriarte's El señorito mimado and La señorita malcriada and
Leandro Fernández de Moratín's El barón, La mojigata, El viejo y la niña, and El sí
de las niñas. In these plays the letters are a fundamental means by which the
playwrights achieve the objective of enseñar deleitando; through the role the letters
play in plot advancement, character development, and the creation of dramatic irony,
suspense, and humor, they are a source of pleasure and dramatic entertainment for the
viewing public. At the same time they are instrumental in illustrating the Enlightenment
ideal of rational thought and critical thinking. The letters are used in these plays as
masks that disguise the identities and motives of the letterwriters and simultaneously
bear within themselves the truth they seek to obscure. As vehicles of deception and
truth, the letters demand that the onstage characters and the viewing public participate
in their interpretation, and in this way, they are the principal means by which the
playwrights not only entertain the audience but also achieve their dramatic and
ideological objectives of interrogating the errors common to society and advocating
virtue and truth.
Degree
Ph. D.