ABSTRACT
Like all the arts, toreo is enduring a crisis in many dimensions. Before World War II, toreo was confined to Spain and to parts of the Spanish-speaking world. Thus the criticism of toreo, like everything else connected with toreo, is unique and peculiarly demanding. Toreo is an art unto itself that must be apprehended in its own terms. The readers of El Ruedo are assured that elegance as it is found in toreo is allied to the Spanish sensibility and "presupposes a high popular conception of man's destiny and of his mastery over himself." Comparative mythology again offers evidence to support the claims for toreo as art rather than as accidental, picturesque survival of savage custom. To limit toreo to Spain or even to the Spanish cultural complex abroad would be the equivalent of limiting drama to ancient Greece, the art of the novel to Britain, or ballet to Russia.
