Figures of Arithmetic: Numeracy, Calculation, and Accounting in the Comedia

Abstract

Paying critical attention to reckoning, accounting, and managing gives us the opportunity to examine how numeracy and the logic of calculation operates on and off the stage. The stage exists as a matrix of figures where numbers imbue the dramatic form, mediate the interactions among characters, quantify emotions, and displays in the unlimited capacity to transform social relations into abstract numerical equivalents. Studied Playwrights include Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, and Tirso de Molina