Theological Implications
As a priest, Tirso creates this sinister tempter for didactical reasons. Don Juan is not solely representative of a youthful indifference; rather he is the personification of all that is sinful and evil. Lucifer, across Christianity, is known as the Prince of Darkness; likewise, Tirso’s Don Juan carries out all his seductions at night. According to biblical passages, Satan does not live in Hell but rather roams Heaven and Earth in search of victims. Don Juan, like the devil, constantly prowls the Earth for his next prey.
Christian theology also dictates that the devil cannot deceive anyone without the person’s consent. In this case, Tirso’s Trickster cannot trick any of the women without their approval. Thus, although Tirso uses Don Juan to represent the devil, he is also used in order to critique Spanish conceptualization of honor. Rather than a reflection of human interiors, honor acts as a mask of sin. Although, in a point all readers must consider, all the women don Juan chooses to dishonor--Isabela, Tisbea, dona Ana, and Aminta--are all lied to by Don Juan as Juan promises to marry them but never does.
Read more about this topic: The Trickster Of Seville And The Stone Guest
Famous quotes containing the words theological and/or implications:
“... all the cares and anxieties, the trials and disappointments of my whole life, are light, when balanced with my sufferings in childhood and youth from the theological dogmas which I sincerely believed, and the gloom connected with everything associated with the name of religion, the church, the parsonage, the graveyard, and the solemn, tolling bell.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.”
—Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985)