SOURCE: Ferreira, Ana Paula. “Intersecting Historical Performances: Gil Vicente's Auto da India.” Gestos: Teoria y Practica del Teatro Hispanico 9, no. 17 (April, 1994): 99-113.

In the following essay, Ferreira applies the principles of postmodern literary criticism to Vicente's play.

There is more work in interpreting interpretations than in interpreting things; and more books about books than any other subject; we do nothing but write glosses on one another.

Montaigne, Essais

In “The Classical Heritage of Modern Drama: The Case of Postmodern Theater,” Patrice Pavis argues that, with the advent of postmodernism, classical and modern dramatic texts “have both been emptied of meaning, or at least of any immediate mimetic meaning, of a signified already there, readily expressed on the stage.” This being so, then, “[a]ny search for the text's sociohistorical dimension, for its inscription in past or present history, is forbidden or at least delayed as long as possible...