La Historia en el marco espacio-temporalParma y Alejandro Farnesio en Nadie fíe su secreto, de Calderón

Resumo

Calderón’s choice of time/space coordinates is not arbitrary. The setting of his fictional works encourages readers to understand the described events from a specific perspective, usually inviting them to distance themselves from the action. The mythical time/space traits that resonate in Calderón’s mythological comedias allow the author to explore a number of subjects — a technique also present in his comedias palatinas. In Nadie fíe su secreto, Calderón creates this sense of remoteness by the means of repeated allusions to Parma (Italy) and Alessandro Farnese. As a result, the action is linked to a very specific historical period: the late sixteenth century. Due to the many political and social relations between Italy and the Hispanic Monarchy at the time, Spanish readers may have perceived Italy as less exotic than Poland or Hungary. However, in seventeenth-century Spain, the crisis and the political establishment’s heroic rhetoric regarding the previous century prompted a strong ideological departure from Nadie fíe su secreto’s fictional universe, which might have led seventeenth-century readers to approach it from an idealized, sublimate perspective. This paper examines the time/space features that contribute to create a sense of remoteness in Nadie fíe su secreto. More specifically, it discusses how they apply to the character of Alessandro Farnese