Sins of the Fathers

"Sins of the Fathers makes an important contribution to the field of early-modern Spanish theatre studies. Attesting to a comparatist's breadth of erudition, Kallendorf manifests a particularly wide range of knowledge about religious history and theology. As well, the catalogue-like openings to the different chapters are enjoyable and illuminating, enlivening the academic study with a vivid depiction of how different vices appeared on stage." -- Elizabeth R. Wright, Department of Romance Languages, University of Georgia

This ground-breaking study is the first to consider Spanish Golden Age comedias as an archive of moral knowledge.

Sins of the Fathers considers sins as nodes of cultural anxiety and explores the tensions between competing organizational categories for moral thought and behaviours, namely the Seven Deadly Sins and the Ten Commandments. Hilaire Kallendorf explores the decline and rise of these organizational categories against critical transformations of the early modern period, such as the accession of Spain to a position of world dominance and the arrival of a new courtly culture to replace an old warrior ethos.
This ground-breaking study is the first to consider Spanish Golden Age comedias as an archive of moral knowledge. Kallendorf has examined over 800 of these plays to illustrate how they provide insight into aspects of early modern experience such as food, sex, work, and money. Finally, Kallendorf engages the theoretical terminology of Marxist literary criticism to demonstrate the inherent ambiguity of cultural change.