The "context of situation" in Tirso's La mujer por fuerza

Abstract

This article was written by the late Premraj Halkhoree over twenty years ago as an Appendix to his Ph.D. thesis on "Social and Literary Satire in the Comedies of Tirso de Molina." The dissertation, directed by A. A. Parker and submitted to Edinburgh University, has now been published, newly edited and abridged, by Henry W. Sullivan and myself, under the same title, as volume 5 of Ottawa Hispanic Studies (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989), 293 pp. Taking as his starting point Malinowski's idea that "...the situation in which words are uttered can never be passed over as irrelevant to the linguistic expression," Halkhoree shows that the comic effects of La mujer por fuerza depend mainly on the fact that certain characters deliberately interpret literally words which are not intended to be taken at face value. The play also exemplifies the conventional use of the dramatic device of the female page, taken in this comedy to its absurdly logical conclusion. The article also deals briefly with questions concerning the play's authorship, female characterization and other related matters.