Between History and Fiction: The Early Modern Spanish Siege Play

This study explores a number of early modern comedias that deal with historical siege or military episodes in the history of the Iberian peoples. Cervantes’s La Numancia, Lope de Vega’s El asalto de Mastrique and his lesser known La nueva victoria de don Gonzalo de Córdoba, Calderón de la Barca’s El sitio de Bredá, and Vélez de Guevara’s El Hércules de Ocaña are key texts examined here. Taking the distinction between history and fiction in Neo—Aristotelian literary theory as a point of depa...