Las hijas de Gracián Ramírez (1831) in Hartzenbusch's authorial construction. Reworking an Eighteenth century play or adapting a traditional plot?

Abstract

This paper examines the traditional categorization of the historical drama Las hijas de Gracián Ramírez by Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch (1831) as a refundición of the play La restauración de Madrid by Manuel Fermín de Laviano (1781). Through a comparative analysis of the textual corpus (17^th-19^th centuries) and the critical reception of the drama, it is argued that, at the level of textual formulation, Las hijas de Gracián Ramírez should not be considered a refundición but rather an adaptation of a traditional plot. Furthermore, its perceived connection to 18th-century theater is shown to stem from a historiographical prejudice tied to the professional and institutional strategies Hartzenbusch employed in constructing his authorial identity as a national writer, as well as to the 19^th-century debate on the moral and aesthetic propriety of refundiciones.