Playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; the word "wright" is an archaic English term for a builder. The words combine to indicate a person who has "wrought" words and other elements into a dramatic form—a play; the first recorded use of the term "playwright" is from 1605, 73 years before the first written record of the term "dramatist". It appears to have been first used in a pejorative sense by Ben Jonson to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson uses the word in his Epigram 49, thought to refer to John Marston: Epigram LXVIII — On Playwright PLAYWRIGHT me reads, still my verses damns, He says I want the tongue of epigrams. Playwright, I loath to have thy manners known In my chaste book. Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and so were regarded as the province of poets; this view was held as late as the early 19th century.
The term "playwright" again lost this negative connotation. The earliest playwright in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks; these early plays were for annual Athenian competitions among play writers held around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. For the ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis, "the act of making"; this is the source of the English word poet. In the 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics, in which he analyzed the principle of action or praxis as the basis for tragedy, he considered elements of drama: plot, thought, diction and spectacle. Since the myths, on which Greek tragedy were based, were known, plot had to do with the arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was determined by action. Tragedy is mimesis—"the imitation of an action, serious", he developed his notion of hamartia, or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist, which provides the basis for the "conflict-driven" play.
The Italian Renaissance brought about a stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities, of action and time; this meant that the playwright had to construct the play so that its "virtual" time would not exceed 24 hours, that it would be restricted to a single setting, that there would be no subplots. Other terms, such as verisimilitude and decorum, circumscribed the subject matter significantly. For example, verisimilitude limits of the unities. Decorum fitted proper protocols for language on stage. In France, contained too many events and actions, violating the 24-hour restriction of the unity of time. Neoclassicism never had as much traction in England, Shakespeare's plays are directly opposed to these models, while in Italy and bawdy commedia dell'arte and opera were more popular forms. In England, after the Interregnum, restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there was a move toward neoclassical dramaturgy.
One structural unit, still useful to playwrights today, is the "French scene", a scene in a play where the beginning and end are marked by a change in the makeup of the group of characters onstage, rather than by the lights going up or down or the set being changed. Popularized in the nineteenth century by the French playwrights Eugène Scribe and Victorien Sardou, the most schematic of all formats, the "well-made play" relies on a series of coincidences that determined the action; this plot driven format is reliant on a prop device, such as a glass of water, or letter that reveals some secret information. In most cases, the character receiving the secret information misinterprets its contents, thus setting off a chain of events. Well-made plays are thus motivated by various plot devices which lead to "discoveries" and "reversals of action," rather than being character motivated. Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House is an example of a well-made structure that began to integrate a more realistic approach to character.
The character Nora's leaving is as much motivated by "the letter" and disclosure of a "past secret" as it is by her own determination to strike out on her own. The well-made play infiltrated other forms of writing and is still seen in popular formats such as the mystery, or "whodunit." Full-length play: Generally, two or three acts with an act break that marks some kind of scene change or time shift. These acts are divided into scenes, which are defined by shifts in time and place; this type of structure is called episodic. Episodic plays contain scene changes and require careful attention to transitions, so as to maintain entails a more causal relationship between units and is defined by the unity of time, and/or action. Short play: A more popular format the short play does not have an intermission and runs over an hour, but less than an hour-and-a-half. One-act play: A useful form for experimental work with less reliance on character development and arc; these remain under an hour in length.
In the US the 10-minute play
Antony Beevor
Sir Antony James Beevor, is an English military historian. He has published the 20th century in general. Born in Kensington, Beevor was educated at two independent schools, he went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he studied under the military historian John Keegan, before receiving a commission in the 11th Hussars on 28 July 1967. Beevor served in England and Germany and was promoted to lieutenant on 28 January 1969 before resigning his commission on 5 August 1970. Beevor has been a visiting professor at the School of History and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London and at the University of Kent, he revised his 1982 The Spanish Civil War in 2006 as The Battle for Spain, which keeps the structure and some language from its predecessor, but uses the updated narrative and detailed style of his Stalingrad book. The reworked release adds characters and archival research from Russia, he is descended from a long line of writers, being a son of "Kinta" Beevor, the daughter of Lina Waterfield, an author and foreign correspondent for The Observer and a descendant of Lucie Duff-Gordon.
Kinta Beevor wrote A Tuscan Childhood. Antony Beevor is married to biographer Artemis Cooper, his best-known works, the best-selling Stalingrad and Berlin - The Downfall 1945, recount the World War II battles between the Soviet Union and Germany. They have been praised for their vivid, compelling style, their treatment of the ordinary lives of combatants and civilians and the use of newly disclosed documents from Soviet archives, his 2012 book The Second World War is noted for its focus on the conditions and grief faced by civilians and women and for its "masterful" coverage of the war in East Asia. Beevor's expertise has been the subject of some commentary, he has appeared as an expert in documentaries related to World War II. Overall, his works have been translated into over 30 languages with over 6 million copies sold. In August 2015, Russia's Yekaterinburg region considered the banning of Beevor's books, accusing him of Nazi sympathies citing his lack of Russian sources when writing about Russia, promoting false stereotypes introduced by Nazi Germany during World War II.
Beevor responded by calling the banning "a government trying to impose its own version of history" like other "attempts to dictate a truth" such as the denial of the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. In January 2018, Beevors's book about the Battle of Stalingrad was banned in Ukraine. Beevor told RFE/RL: "I must say, this sounds astonishing. There's nothing inherently anti-Ukrainian in the book at all." Beevor was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2017 New Year Honours for "services in support of Armed Forces Professional Development". Beevor is a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a member of Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana and a commander of the Order of the Crown. Beevor was elected an honorary Fellow of King's College London in July 2016, he was awarded an Honorary D. Litt. From the University of Bath in 2010, an honorary doctorate from the University of Kent, awarded in 2004, his book Crete: The Battle and the Resistance for which he won the Runciman Prize, administered by the Anglo-Hellenic League for stimulating interest in Greek history and culture.
Beevor has been recognized with the 2014 Pritzker Military Museum & Library's Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. Tim O'Brien, the 2013 recipient, made the announcement on behalf of the selection committee; the award carried a purse of $US 100,000. In July 2016, he was awarded the Medlicott Medal for services to history by the UK based Historical Association. Beevor sits on the Council of the Society of Authors. Crete: The Battle and the Resistance Runciman Prize Stalingrad Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction Wolfson History Prize Hawthornden Prize for Literature Berlin:The Downfall 1945 Longman-History Today Trustees' Award The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-39 La Vanguardia Prize for Non-Fiction He has written thirteen books and non-fiction. Antony Beevor has edited books, including: A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–1945 by Vasily Grossman. ISBN 9780375424076He has contributed to several other books, including: The British Army and Society into the Twenty-First Century, ed by Hew Strachan What Ifs? of American History: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, by Robert Cowley, Antony Beevor and Caleb Carr.
Official website Antony Beevor Stalingrad Berlin - The Downfall 1945 Antony Beevor discusses his book on the Spanish Civil War Antony Beevor on IMDb Appearances on C-SPAN Interview on The Second World War at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library on 21 June 2012 Sir Antony Beevor on Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, 19 February 2017
Valencian Community
The Valencian Community is an autonomous community of Spain. It is the fourth most populous autonomous community after Andalusia and Madrid with more than 4.9 million inhabitants. Its homonymous capital Valencia is metropolitan area in Spain, it is located along the Mediterranean coast on the east side of the Iberian peninsula. It borders with Catalonia to the north and Castilla–La Mancha to the west, Murcia to the south; the Valencian Community consists of three provinces which are Valencia and Alicante. According to its Statute of Autonomy, the Valencian people are a nationality, their origins date back to the Aragonese reconquest of the Moorish Taifa of Valencia, taken by James I of Aragon in 1238 during the Reconquista. The newly founded Kingdom of Valencia was granted wide self-government under the Crown of Aragon. Valencia experienced its golden age in the 15th century. Self-government continued after the unification of the Spanish Kingdom, but was suspended in 1707 by Phillip V of Spain as a result of the Spanish War of Succession.
Valencian nationalism resurged towards the end of the 19th century, which led to the modern conception of the Valencian Country. Self-government under the Generalitat Valenciana was reestablished in 1982 after Spanish transition to democracy. Many Valencian people speak Valencian, the region's own co-official language, a southwestern dialect of Catalan standardised by the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua. Valencian is a diglossic language, repressed during Franco's dictatorship in favour of Spanish. Since it regained official status in 1982 in the Valencian Estatut d'Autonomia. Valencian has been implemented in public administration and the education system leading to an exponential increase in knowledge of its formal standard. Valencian is understood by more than half of the population living within the Valencian Community. Valencia was founded by the Romans under the name of "Valentia Edetanorum", which translates to'Valiance of the Land of the Lamb'. With the establishment of the Taifa of Valencia, the name developed to بلنسية, which became Valencia after the expulsion of the Moors.
"Valencian Community" is the standard translation of the official name in Valencian recognized by the Statute of Autonomy of 1982. This is the name most used in public administration, the media and Spanish written language. However, the variant of "Valencian Country" that emphasizes the nationality status of the Valencian people is still the preferred one by left-wing parties, civil associations, Catalan written language and major academic institutions like the University of Valencia. "Valencian Community" is a neologism, adopted after democratic transition in order to solve the conflict between two competing names: "Valencian Country" and "Former Kingdom of Valencia". On one hand, "Valencian Country" represented the modern conception of nationality that resurged in the 19th century, it became well-established during the Second Spanish Republic and on with the works of Joan Fuster in the 1960s, implying the existence of the "Catalan Countries". This nationalist subtext was opposed by anti-Catalan blaverists, who proposed "Former Kingdom of Valencia" instead in order to emphasize Valencian independence from Catalonia.
Blaverists have accepted the official denomination. The autonomous community can be homonymously identified with its capital "Valencia". However, this could be disregarding of the provinces of Castellón. Other more anecdotal translations have included "Land of Valencia", "Region of Valencia" and "Valencian Region"; the term "Region", carries negative connotations among many Valencians because it could deny their nationality status. The Pre-Roman autochthonous people of the Valencian Community were the Iberians, who were divided in several groups; the Greeks established colonies in the coastal towns of Saguntum and Dénia beginning in the 5th century BC, where they traded and mixed with the local Iberian populations. After the end of the First Punic War between Carthage and Rome in 241 BC, which established their limits of influence in the Ebro river, the Carthaginians occupied the whole region; the dispute over the hegemony of Saguntum, a Hellenized Iberian coastal city with diplomatic contacts with Rome, destroyed by Hannibal in 219 BC, ignited the Second Punic War, which ended with the incorporation of the region to the Roman Empire.
The Romans founded the city of Valentia in 138 BC, over the centuries overtook Saguntum in importance. After the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the Barbarian Invasions in the 5th century AD, the region was first invaded by the Alans and ruled by the Visigoths, until the arrival of the Arabs in 711, which left a broad impact in the region, still visible in today's Valencian landscape and culture. After the fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba, two main independent taifas were established at the region, Balansiya and Dénia, along with the small and short living taifas of Orihuela, Alpuente, Jérica and Sagunt and the short Christian conquest of Valencia by El Cid. However, the origins of present-day Valencia date back to the Kingdom of Valencia, which came into existence in the 13th century. James I of Aragon led the Christian conquest and colonization of the existing Islamic taifas with Aragonese and Catalan colonizers in 1208; the kingdom developed intensively in the 14th and 15th centuries, which are con
Goatherd
A goatherd or goatherder is a person who herds goats as a vocational activity. It is similar to a shepherd. Goatherds are most found in regions where goat populations are significant. Goats are bred as dairy or meat animals, with some breeds being shorn for wool; the top six goat industry groups in the United States include: meat, fiber or hair, 4-H, biotech. Companies using goats to control and eradicate leafy spurge and other toxic weeds have sprouted across the American West
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, is best known for its visual artworks and writings. Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created strange creatures from everyday objects, developed painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself, its aim was to "resolve the contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality". Works of surrealism feature the element of unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur. Leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe affecting the visual arts, literature and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice and social theory; the word'surrealism' was coined in March 1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire three years before Surrealism emerged as an art movement in Paris.
He wrote in a letter to Paul Dermée: "All things considered, I think in fact it is better to adopt surrealism than supernaturalism, which I first used". Apollinaire used the term in his program notes for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, which premiered 18 May 1917. Parade was performed with music by Erik Satie. Cocteau described the ballet as "realistic". Apollinaire went further, describing Parade as "surrealistic": This new alliance—I say new, because until now scenery and costumes were linked only by factitious bonds—has given rise, in Parade, to a kind of surrealism, which I consider to be the point of departure for a whole series of manifestations of the New Spirit, making itself felt today and that will appeal to our best minds. We may expect it to bring about profound changes in our arts and manners through universal joyfulness, for it is only natural, after all, that they keep pace with scientific and industrial progress; the term was taken up again by Apollinaire, in the preface to his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias, written in 1903 and first performed in 1917.
World War I scattered the writers and artists, based in Paris, in the interim many became involved with Dada, believing that excessive rational thought and bourgeois values had brought the conflict of the war upon the world. The Dadaists protested with anti-art gatherings, performances and art works. After the war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued. During the war, André Breton, who had trained in medicine and psychiatry, served in a neurological hospital where he used Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic methods with soldiers suffering from shell-shock. Meeting the young writer Jacques Vaché, Breton felt that Vaché was the spiritual son of writer and pataphysics founder Alfred Jarry, he admired the young writer's anti-social disdain for established artistic tradition. Breton wrote, "In literature, I was successively taken with Rimbaud, with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with Nouveau, with Lautréamont, but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most."Back in Paris, Breton joined in Dada activities and started the literary journal Littérature along with Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault.
They began experimenting with automatic writing—spontaneously writing without censoring their thoughts—and published the writings, as well as accounts of dreams, in the magazine. Breton and Soupault wrote The Magnetic Fields. Continuing to write, they came to believe that automatism was a better tactic for societal change than the Dada form of attack on prevailing values; the group attracted additional members and grew to include writers and artists from various media such as Paul Éluard, Benjamin Péret, René Crevel, Robert Desnos, Jacques Baron, Max Morise, Pierre Naville, Roger Vitrac, Gala Éluard, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Man Ray, Hans Arp, Georges Malkine, Michel Leiris, Georges Limbour, Antonin Artaud, Raymond Queneau, André Masson, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Prévert, Yves Tanguy. As they developed their philosophy, they believed that Surrealism would advocate the idea that ordinary and depictive expressions are vital and important, but that the sense of their arrangement must be open to the full range of imagination according to the Hegelian Dialectic.
They looked to the Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse. Freud's work with free association, dream analysis, the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination, they embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness. As Salvador Dalí proclaimed, "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad."Beside the use of dream analysis, they emphasized that "one could combine inside the same frame, elements not found together to produce illogical and startling effects." Breton included the idea of the startling juxtapositions in his 1924 manifesto, taking it in turn from a 1918 essay by poet Pierre Reverdy, which said: "a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be−the greater its emotional power and poetic reality."The group aimed to revolutionize human experience, in its
Alicante
Alicante, or Alacant, both the Spanish and Valencian being official names, is a city and port in Spain on the Costa Blanca, the capital of the province of Alicante and of the comarca of Alacantí, in the south of the Valencian Community. It is a historic Mediterranean port; the population of the city of Alicante proper was 330,525, estimated as of 2016, ranking as the second-largest Valencian city. Including nearby municipalities, the Alicante conurbation had 452,462 residents; the population of the metropolitan area was 757,085 as of 2014 estimates, ranking as the eighth-largest metropolitan area of Spain. The name of the city echoes the Arabic name Laqant or Al-Laqant, which in turn reflects the Latin Lucentum; the area around Alicante has been inhabited for over 7000 years. The first tribes of hunter-gatherers moved down from Central Europe between 5000 and 3000 BC; some of the earliest settlements were made on the slopes of Mount Benacantil. By 1000 BC Greek and Phoenician traders had begun to visit the eastern coast of Spain, establishing small trading ports and introducing the native Iberian tribes to the alphabet and the pottery wheel.
The Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca established the fortified settlement of Akra Leuka, in the mid-230s BC, presumed to have been on the site of modern Alicante. Although the Carthaginians conquered much of the land around Alicante, the Romans would rule Hispania Tarraconensis for over 700 years. By the 5th century AD, Rome was in decline and the Roman predecessor town of Alicante, known as Lucentum, was more or less under the control of the Visigothic warlord Theudimer and thereafter under Visigothic rule from 400 to 700 A. D; the Goths did not put up much resistance to the Arab conquest of Medina Laqant in the beginning of the 8th century. The Moors ruled eastern Spain until the 13th century Reconquista. Alicante was taken in 1247 by the Castilian king Alfonso X, but it passed soon and definitively to the Kingdom of Valencia in 1296 with King James II of Aragon, it gained the status of Royal Village with representation in the medieval Valencian Parliament. After several decades of being the battlefield where the Kingdom of Castile and the Crown of Aragon clashed, Alicante became a major Mediterranean trading station exporting rice, olive oil and wool.
But between 1609 and 1614 King Felipe III expelled thousands of Moriscos who had remained in Valencia after the Reconquista, due to their cooperation with Barbary pirates who continually attacked coastal cities and caused much harm to trade. This act cost the region dearly. Things got worse in the early 18th century; the end of the 19th century witnessed a sharp recovery of the local economy with increasing international trade and the growth of the city harbour leading to increased exports of several products. During the early 20th century, Alicante was a minor capital that enjoyed the benefit of Spain's neutrality during World War I, that provided new opportunities for local industry and agriculture; the Rif War in the 1920s saw numerous alicantinos drafted to fight in the long and bloody campaigns in the former Spanish protectorate against the Rif rebels. The political unrest of the late 1920s led to the victory of Republican candidates in local council elections throughout the country, the abdication of King Alfonso XIII.
The proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic was much celebrated in the city on 14 April 1931. The Spanish Civil War broke out on 17 July 1936. Alicante was the last city loyal to the Republican government to be occupied by General Franco's troops on 1 April 1939, its harbour saw the last Republican government officials fleeing the country. Vicious air bombings were targeted on Alicante during the three years of civil conflict, most notably the bombing by the Italian Aviazione Legionaria of the Mercado de Abastos on 25 May 1938 in which more than 300 civilians perished; the late 1950s and early 1960s saw the onset of a lasting transformation of the city by the tourist industry. Large buildings and complexes rose in nearby Albufereta and Playa de San Juan, with the benign climate being the biggest draw to attract prospective buyers and tourists who kept the hotels reasonably busy. New construction benefited the whole economy, as the development of the tourism sector spawned new businesses such as restaurants and other tourist-oriented enterprises.
The old airfield at Rabassa was closed and air traffic moved to the new El Altet Airport, which made a more convenient and modern facility for charter flights bringing tourists from northern European countries. When Franco died in 1975, his successor Juan Carlos I played his part as the living symbol of the transition of Spain to a democratic constitutional monarchy; the governments of regional communities were given constitutional status as nationalities, their governments were given more autonomy, including that of the Valencian region, the Generalitat Valenciana. The Port of Alicante has been reinventing itself since the industrial decline the city suffered in the 1980s. In recent years
Spanish Baroque literature
Spanish Baroque literature is the literature written in Spain during the Baroque, which occurred during the 17th century. The Baroque is characterized by the following features: Pessimism: The Renaissance had been not successful in its purpose of imposing the harmony and the perfection over the world, as the humanists tried, neither had made man happier. An intellectual pessimism became more and more marked, together with a carefree character give testimony. Disappointment: As Renaissance ideals failed and, in the case of Spain, political power continued to ebb, disappointment grew and was manifest in literature which in many cases recalled that of two centuries before, as in the Dance of Death or the Poems on the Death of my Father by Manrique. According to Quevedo, life is formed by "successions of deceased": the new born ones become them, from the diaper to the shroud. In conclusion, nothing temporal has importance, it is necessary only to obtain eternal salvation. Preoccupation about the passage of time.
Loss of confidence in the ideals of the Renaissance. In view of the crisis of the Baroque, Spanish writers reacted in several ways: Escapism: The avoidance of reality, through singing past feats and glories, or through presenting an ideal world in which problems are resolved and order prevails. Others, took refuge in the world of art and mythology, as in the case of Luis de Góngora. Satire: Another group of writers chose to make fun of the reality, like Quevedo, Góngora on some occasions, in the picaresque novel. Stoicism: Complaints on the vanity of the world, the fleetingness of beauty and fame; the greatest exponent of this was Calderón de la Barca in the autos sacramentales. Moralizing: Criticizing the defects and vices, proposing models of conduct in line with the political and religious ideology of their time, typefied by the narrative and doctrinal prose of Gracián and of Saavedra Fajardo; the narrative of the 17th century opens with the figure of Miguel de Cervantes, who returned to Spain in 1580 after ten years absence.
His first printed work was The Galatea. It is a pastoral novel in six books of verse and prose, according to the model of the Diana of Montemayor. In 1605 he published The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, with immediate success. In 1613 the Exemplary novels appeared, they are a collection of twelve short novels that look for an ideal, although this is not always clear. In 1615, Cervantes published the second part of Don Quixote. In 1617, a year after Cervantes died, The works of Persiles and Sigismunda appeared, it draws on the Byzantine and Greek novelists such as Heliodorus and his The Ethiopian Story of Theagenes and Chariclea. It relates, in four books, how Periandro and Auristela travel from northern territories of Norway or Finland to Rome to receive Christian marriage; as is typical of this subgenre, throughout the trip they experience a variety of trials and delays: captivity by Barbarians, the jealousy and machinations of rivals. The work takes advantage of resources of the Exemplary Novels - the italianizing ones - puzzles, disguises, etc.
Francisco de Quevedo wrote towards 1604 his first work of prose fiction: the picaresque novel titled The Life Story of the Sharper called Don Pablos, example of wanderers and mirror of scrooges. Quevedo wrote satirical and moral prose works where a stoic morality predominates, where subjects like the criticism of archetypes of the society of the Baroque, the constant presence of death in the life of man, Christian fervor whereupon the politics has to conduct itself; the first of his Dreams dates from 1605: The Dream of the Judgment narrates the resurrection of the dead, who must answer for the manner of their life. It is a social satire against professions or trades: jurists, butchers... In 1619 he wrote the Politics of God, government of Christ and tyranny of Satan, a political treatise which expounds a doctrine of good government, or'mirror of princes', for a righteous king, who should have Jesus Christ for model of conduct, it is a treatise in conformity with Spanish anti-Machiavellism, proposing a politics free of intrigue and unconnected with bad influences.
Towards 1636 Quevedo concluded his last great satirical prose: The hour of everybody and the Fortune with prudence, unpublished until 1650. In it, Jupiter requests Fortune to give for one hour what each individual deserves; this makes plain the falsity of appearances, the hidden truth under the veils of the hypocrisy. Operating by antithesis Quevedo shows doctors who are in fact executioners, the rich as poor but thieving, a whole gallery of social types and states is presented, all implacably satirized. Marcus Brutus arises from glosses or commentaries to the biography that Plutarch wrote on this Latin statesman in his Parallel lives; the most important work of the second half of the century is The Critical one of the Aragonese Jesuit Baltasar Gracián. With it, the Spanish novel is solved in abstractions; the idea prevails over the concrete figure. It is a philosophical novel written in form of allegory of the human life. Gracián cultivated didactic prose in treatises of moral intention and practical purpose, like The Hero, The Politician don Fernando the Catholic or The Discreet one.
In them he creates a full serie
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