Document Type
Article
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Decimonónica
Volume
6
Issue
1
Publisher
Decimonónica
Publication Date
2009
First Page
1
Last Page
18
Abstract
While Los amantes de Teruel was not Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch’s most widely-performed drama during his lifetime, it is, nonetheless, the one for which he is best remembered today. From its first performance on January 19, 1837, many sensed that the play would become part of the Spanish literary canon, as is evidenced by the praise from the critic for the Semanario Pintoresco Español, who boldly proclaimed, “el Señor Hartzenbusch se ha colocado en este punto a la altura de los grandes modelos, y en casi todo el drama parece revelar un alma del temple de Rojas y Calderones” (5 February 1837). Despite the enormous success of Los amantes’s initial debut (which was followed by eight subsequent performances), Hartzenbusch, ever the perfectionist at heart, revised the drama several times after its first performance. He eventually changed it from a five-act drama to a four- act one by 1849, with the latter version also enjoying considerable critical acclaim. Salvador García, Carmen Iranzo, and, most especially, Jean Louis Picoche, have detailed many of these changes in their respective editions of Los amantes. All three of them acknowledge a tendency amongst scholars of Spanish Romanticism to favor one version of the drama over another, with García and Iranzo defending their preference for the 1837 version and the 1849 version, respectively.
Recommended Citation
Blackshaw, Christine L., "It is the East and Zulima is the Sin: Shifting Representations of Muslim Spain in Hartzenbusch’s Los amantes de Teruel" (2009). Decimonónica. Paper 177.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/decimononica/177