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It is well known that in France the Spanish comedy is not considered a model to be imitated, yet, reading the peritexts (dédicace, avis au lecteur, épître) of the 17th Century French adapters and comparing the imitations with the sources, we can see attitudes that are not always connected to preconceived ideas about the superiority of génie français, both in the consideration that the playwrights reveal towards contemporary Spanish plays, and in their way of adapting them. After outlining the duration and extent of the phenomenon of the seventeenth-century comédie à l'espagnole, the study analyzes the pièces and the peritexts, following two paths: the first investigates the real knowledge and opinion that the French dramatists had of Spanish dramaturgy; the second reconstructs and analyzes the translation methods that, in their forewords, the adapters claim they want to use to make Spanish theatrical texts usable in France, and which they often disregard in their pièces.

Although its intensity and duration, the relation between Elsa Morante and the cinema is less studied by the critics, perhaps because of the scarceness of information. But the discovery of many new documents in these years permitted to know the plots written (but not realized9 by the Author from 1933 till 1952 (there are three different plots: Il diavolo , Miss Italia and Verranno a te sull’aure ). It is also possible to have a clear idea of the collaboration with some directors like: Alberto Lattuada, Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Pier Paolo Pasolini. A close analysis of the cinematographic version of the novel L’Isola di Arturo , directed by Damiano Damiani in 1962, permits to determine that the dissatisfaction which Morante expressed in many circumstances derives from a lack of dialogue between her and the director damiano Damiani.