SOURCE: Friis, Ronald J. “‘Hoy ya no cameos en aquellos errores’: Mimetic Violence and Transcendence in Buero Vallejo's El Tragaluz.” Romance Notes XXXIV, no. 2 (winter 1993): 203-10.

In the following essay, Friis offers a stylistic and thematic analysis of El Tragaluz, focusing on Buero Vallejo's use of mimesis in the play.

The Platonic conception of mimesis as the depiction of reality has received a new interpretation in the writings of René Girard. For Girard, imitation and similarity are the keys to understanding many of the puzzles of human nature, especially desire and violence. Antonio Buero Vallejo's El tragaluz (1967) features a dual representation of mimesis, providing at once a social message on the effects of the Spanish Civil War¹ and an exploration of the psychology of violence. The interplay of these interior and exterior themes is structured by the Investigadores, the narrators from a future century who present the play's...