La construcción de Loyola: biografía y teatro novohispano.

Abstract

The handwritten comedy Vida de san Ignacio (Life if Saint Ignatius) is a work of circumstance that had to be represented for the reception of Archbishop Manso de Zúñiga in 1628. The manuscript allows us to appreciate the playwright skills with which he addresses a problematic issue: to bring to the stage a historical figure, with a biographical narrative consolidated since the previous century. Al­though the playwright had little space for innovation within the limits imposed by the canonical biographies of Loyola, he constructs his Vida de san Ignacio with strategies that allow him to manipulate the narrative material and make it representable. Thanks to the use of ‘gaps’ in the biographical narrative, the playwright can build allegorical characters, resignify Loyola’s garments, emphasize the theme of humbleness, and even present Ignatius as subject of divine and de­monic forces without altering the biographic truth.