David Hildner, Professor
Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Prof. Hildner's research has centered around the Spanish classical comedia, especially the work of Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681). Having published a major study on reason and the passions in Calderón's more serious drama, he is currently working on the "lighter" intrigue plays, specifically their relationship to the "graver" works within the rigorously tragi-comic comedia genre and the sort of audience/reader reactions they might have produced in the seventeenth century and may produce today. The notions of "play" and "amazement" are central to his analysis, both in the Baroque usage of those concepts and in modern theoreticians. His other research and teaching interests include advanced language practice, Portuguese literature before 1800, philosophy and literary criticism, and religion in literature.

Major Publications:

• Reason and the Passions in the "Comedias" of Calderón. Amsterdam:
  J. Benjamins (Purdue University Monographs in Romance Languages), 1982. 119
  pp.
• Poetry and Truth in the Spanish Works of Fray Luis de León. London: Tamesis Books, Ltd., 1992. 177 pp.
• "Pertinencia e impertinencia del lenguaje retórico-poético en Calderón." Hispanic Essays in Honor of Frank P. Casa. Ed. A. Robert Lauer and Henry W. Sullivan. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. 233-245.