La performance teatral de las máquinas maravillosas. Configuraciones ambivalentes de la técnica y el teatro en los siglos XVI y XVII

Abstract

This article explores the representation techniques and the epistemological dimension of the machine in the discoursive field of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a period in which there was no fundamental di!erence between the scientific, parascientific, philosophic, and aesthetic discourses. Departing from Jan Lazardig’s research, this article analyzes the paradoxical character of mechanical engineering in Golden Age Spain, in which it occupied a place between practical functionality and admiration, rationality and wonder. In this sense, this article explores the kinds of theatrical performance that the machine could permit as an admirable and wonderful object: on the one hand, in the courtesan theater and its machinery, and, on the other, in machine books in the tradition of the Theatrum machinarum. We analyze, therefore, the paralelisms and diferences in their structures, representation techiniques, and pragmatical dimensions.