Conocimiento, escepticismo y poder en En la vida todo es verdad y todo mentira de Calderón

Abstract

Previous critics of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s late play En la vida todo es verdad y todo mentira have correctly pointed out the debt that the piece owes to skeptical premises, either from Graeco-Roman sources or from Renaissance recastings, but these treatments have generally not taken into consideration three factors which limit the degree to which En la vida could be termed a drama of skepticism: (1) Much of the uncertainty surrounding identities and events stems, not from a general incapacity of humans to possess certain knowledge, but from the manipulation of knowledge and ignorance by individual interests or for reasons of state. (2) Although the neo- Aristotelian tradition in dramatic theory was often rejected by Spanish baroque dramatists, they still accepted that each drama needed a comprehensible, summarizable story line, thus limiting the scope of plot ambiguity, no matter what ambiguities arose from other elements. (3) Calderón’s characters, no matter how much they may discourse on their inability to know certain facts, must at certain points take action and move the plot forward, often in spite of their uncertainty.