From chivalric books to seventeenth-century stages: giants and savages in the chivalric theater

Abstract

Sometimes the giants of Castilian romances of chivalry provide a precedent for the giant's stage performances in the classical Spanish theatre on chivalric themes. Also, the giant assimilates to another figure present in chivalric fiction: the wild man. This paper studies the construction of giants and savages in the 17th-century chivalric theatre, from the two sides that build the theatrical character: the dramatic text and the spectacular text. Through this analysis it will be possible to clarify the mechanisms of adaptation between different generic codes: theatrical signs that become dramatic conventions and the roles that characters often perform.