The Impact of the Civil War on the Life and Work of Antonio Buero Vallejo

This essay begins with an account of the third decade of Buero Vallejo's life, from the outbreak of the Civil War to his release from imprisonment thereafter in 1946, in the course of which he abandoned his original vocation as a graphic artist to become Spain's leading playwright throughout the second half of the century. It proceeds to demonstrate the enormous influence of those ten years on almost all his thirty works for the stage, and concludes with a discussion of his last, Misión al pueblo desierto (1999). In this, characteristically an open-ended ‘tragedia esperanzada’, an imaginary episode early in the War is framed by a debate in the present which insists on the need to confront today the issues that that conflict raised

Ancient history · Art · Imprisonment · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Spanish Civil War · The Imaginary · Historical and Modern Theater Studies · History · Law · Psychology · Spanish Culture and Identity