El funcionamiento de la analogía en la transmisión de la doctrina por el teatro: la Farsa del juego de cañas de Diego Sánchez de Badajoz

Abstract

Complex relations develop between religion and theater. Theater’s status as fiction and the “lie” of its representation distance it from the official support of doctrine. And yet the Church used theater as the mouthpiece of orthodoxy. To fulfill its propagandist role, the religious theater of the sixteenth century yields to numerous imperatives and opens itself to diverse procedures. The present study considers these procedures with a special focus on analogy. The teachings transmitted in this theater by means of analogy include the formulation of articles of faith as well as the transmission through scenic enunciations of a communicational model in which only the Church has control over knowledge. These interpretations are illustrated with an analysis of Diego Sánchez de Badajoz’s Farsa del juego de cañas (from the end of the fifteenth century-1552), a play that opens up to a heterogeneous ensemble of knowledge whose coherence is based on the guiding thread of analogy.

Keywords

• religion
• theater
• Church
• analogy