| Summary: | The purpose of this thesis is to study the Spanish
piropo from an historical and socio-cultural point of view.
It examines the causes that led to the rise and fall of
this particular kind of flirtatious compliment.
The art of flirting, as a part of the ritual of
courtship and of the strategy of seduction, is a universal
phenomenon. Nevertheless, this investigation deals mainly
with the Spanish cultural context, contending that the
street-pircpo, with its specific stylistic and linguistic
characteristics, should be considered a uniquely Spanish
phenomenon belonging to Spanish popular culture.
The main focus of this study will be the popular
theatre of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. The popular theatre which brought to the stage
the language and behaviour of the lower classes, albeit in
stylized form, created in turn new models of social and
linguistic conduct, which were copied and adopted by the
people. I try to prove that the specific style that
distinguishes the Spanish piropo is due in large measure to
this interaction between the theatre and the street.
This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part
deals with problems of definition, with the etymological and social origins and with formal and functional aspects
of the piropo. Furthermore, it attempts to identify the
psycho-social causes of this particular type of gender
relations.
The second part studies the relationship between the
piropo and popular literature, and attempts to determine
the historical and socio-cultural factors that led to the
disappearance of this popular form of compliment. === Arts, Faculty of === French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of === Graduate
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