Constructing the Don Carlos Legend in Nineteenth-Century Spain

Abstract

Abstract In this essay I discuss the three best-known literary contributions to the Don Carlos legend from the early nineteenth century: Manuel José Quintana’s ‘El Panteón del Escorial’ (1805) José María Díaz’s Felipe II (1836), and Pedro Calvo Asensio’s Felipe el Prudente (1853). As I hope to demonstrate, in each of these works Don Carlos is a metaphor for Spain, and both father and son embody liberal Romantics’ anxieties about the nation’s political future. These plays also call attention to liberal Spain’s lack of cohesion throughout the early nineteenth century.