In the author's own words his play "aims to set down within a realistic framework, so necessary to the theatre, a nucleus of problems and passions involving man in general, and not blind people in particular." The physical blindness of the depicted characters is only a motive or pretext for presenting the limitations we all share as human beings. Accordingly, the play must be understood as a sketch of the tragedy of man and his destiny, a problem which again is acquiring legitimacy and urgency, outstepping from the serious Spanish theatre studies into the surrounding reality. Two aspects are set down as intentionally dominant within the plan of Buero Vallejo's work. One is the social relationship, a mixture of free and forced situations, which arestablished between a strong individuality whose reasoning and frustration conflict with the reasoning and passion of the community. The other involves the tension of the visionary, the yearning for "light" and the belief in it which occasionally distinguishes the people of genuine religious feelings facing the material interests of the majority.

El sueno de la razon is an excellent example of Antonio Buero Vallejo's -posibilismo-, as the Spanish playwright called his strategy for conveying his strong public denouncements while eluding the Franco regime's censorship. Buero Vallejo centers the action in the pathos of Francisco de Goya, an indisputable icon of the Spanish culture; he delves into the painter's mind and daemons, using Goya's art to transform the play into a -total immersion- experience. In this way, he provokes the audience's feelings and leads it to complete the work's message after the curtain's fall. Most of the action takes place in Goya's -Quinta del sordo- (the -deaf man's country home-), during the Spanish King Ferdinand VII's restoration, (1823) with its subsequent crack down on -freethinkers, liberals and masons-. The projected -Black Paintings- form a good part of the sparse stage design. Buero Vallejo plays with a sequence of images, conflating Goya deafness with dialogue, paintings and his etchings -Caprichos-, -Disparates- and -Desastres de la guerra" in order to achieve a strong, univocal form of communication. This edition, with a foreword by Dr. Yosalida C. Rivero-Zaritzky, combines ample footnotes with reproductions of the -Black Paintings- inserted in the places prescribed by the author's stage directions. The text thus evokes the theatrical effect intended by Buero Vallejo. An appendix with reproductions of the etchings mentioned throughout the text completes the background information required to fully understand -and enjoy this masterpiece of Spanish theatre.

In spite of the Franco regime censorship, and after an initial almost total purge that meant exile to many of the top intellectuals and artists, the evolutionary process of peninsular Spanish art and culture did not stop to a complete standstill. During the 40's and 50's a renewal movement took place, and the three playwrights and their plays included in this volume were of utmost importance to it. The case of Arrabal, premiered outside the Spanish borders and in French, though most of his production was conceived and written initially in Spanish, is a perfect example of how Spanish literature kept its liveliness, even in exile. These three plays also share the fact of being tragedies, a very uncommon characteristic in Spanish theatre, specially so during the years in which comedy ruled as a very convenient way of escaping the dramatic socio-political surrounding reality. The renewal impulse in Spanish theatre started in 1945. That year the -Arte Nuevo- group was established, and in 1949 -Teatro de Vanguardia. 15 obras de Arte Nuevo- was published. Avant garde theatre New Art during the 40's in Franco's Spain The renewed and open-minded theatrical context that emerged in the stifled climate of the Franco Spain of the 40's, the so called -black decade-, is noticeably present in these plays of the Antonio Buero Vallejo, Alfonso Sastre and Fernando Arrabal production. Sastre, as well as Arrabal and Buero Vallejo were imprisoned by the regime, and these plays reflect their respective biographical projections. This volume gathers these authors' different styles and playwriting -very often clashing- but whose common constant is the linking of the Spanish theatre with the international drama tendencies. Along his introduction professor Victor Fuentes develops a schematic analysis of the Buero Vallejo, Sastre and Arrabal achievements through drama experimentation in their respective plays. With this edition we offer the US reader three fundamental plays of the literary, cultural and theatrical Spanish -and universal- memory of more than half a century ago, whilst proposing the deciphering of their present meanings and projections into the future.

Part of the Bristol Classical Press series of Spanish texts, this is Buero Vallejo's play "El Tragaluz". The series is designed to meet the needs of the fast-growing A Level and undergraduate market for texts in the Spanish language. Each text comes with English notes and vocabulary, and with an introduction by an editor with an expert knowledge both of the work and of its literary and cultural context. Set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, this play occupies an important place in Buero Vallejo's theatre incorporating earlier metaphysical preoccupations with a later historical and political dimension.