Lucas Fernández: una retòrica afectiva per a la passió

Abstract

To a Christian person God’s tragic death should caused an emotional strain; a playwright concerned about the Passion should create a dramatic language capable of expressing that highest degree of emotions. When Lucas Fernandez began to write a play for (rather than on) the Passion he was in that position. It is important to remark the rhetoric of repetition in the oral, popular culture which appears in Lucas Fernandez’s play: at the beginning of the verse (anaphore) or one next to another (reduplication or anadyphlosis). The accumulation of interjections, the use of the same verb in various tenses or words with the same root are very significant, too. We can also take into account the parallel structures and the great number of synonymous which appear in a few verses. Lucas Fernandez also articulates two consecutive speeches, one with positive, very emphasized connotations and the other with negative ones. Indeed, we could consider the Auto de la Pasión to be a continuous hyperbole which brings the feeling of anguish to its limit. The questions without an answer are addressed either to God or to the Jews, the two poles of the play. The apostrophe is used to address God in the second person, as in the last song. We should notice that the pathetic figures, even the optation, the entreaty and the imprecation, are repeatedly and copiously used. Those aspects of a visual, spectacular nature are also important. We are not in front of a primitive play, but of an author who knows how to use a number of resources.