Description:
An assessment of the life, work and reputation of Spain’s leading Golden Age dramatist

A Companion to Lope de Vega brings together essays by leading international scholars on the life and works of Lope de Vega Carpio, the ‘fénix de los ingenios’, or, as his rival Miguel de Cervantes dubbed him, ‘monstruo de la naturaleza’. Spain’s foremost Golden Age playwright excelled in all literary genres, including prose and poetry, also covered here. The contributors evaluate current critical debates and issues in Lope de Vega studies, as well as providing new readings of key texts.

It has been the aim of the editors to do justice to the variety, profusion and originality of Lope’s work, placing the writer and his output firmly in their historical context as well asassessing his reputation in literary history. The wide variety of critical perspectives found in the volume reflects the liveliness of the debate surrounding this enduringly popular figure whose drama is enjoying a renaissance intheatres around the globe.


CONTENTS:

Introduction: Lope’s Life and Work

Lope’s Knowledge - Victor Dixon

Lope de Vega and Theatre in Madrid - José María Ruano de la Haza

From Stage to Page: Editorial History and Literary Promotion in Lope de Vega’s Partes de Comedias - Alejandro Garcia Reidy

Imagining Lope’s Lyric Poetry in the ‘Soneto primero’ of the Rimas - Tyler Fisher

‘Quien en virtud emplea su ingenio...’: Lope de Vega’s Religious Poetry - Arantza Mayo

Outside In: The Subject[s] at Play in Las rimas humanas y divinas de Tomé de Burguillos - Isabel Torres

The Arte nuevo de hacer comedias: Lope’s dramatic statement - Jonathan W. Thacker

Three Canonical Plays - Alexander Samson

Lope de Vega, the Chronicle-Legend Plays and Collective Memory - Geraldine Hazbun

Sacred Souls and Sinners: Abstinence and Adaptation in Lope’s Religious Drama - Elaine Canning

Lope, the Comedian - Jonathan W. Thacker

Lope de Vega’s Speaking Pictures: Tantalizing Titians and Forbidden Michelangelos in La quinta de Florencia - Frederick A de Armas

Performing Sanctity: Lope’s Use of Teresian Iconography in Santa Teresa de Jesús - Barbara Mujica

Masculinities and Honour in Los comendadores de Córdoba - Geraint Evans

El castigo sin venganza and the Ironies of Rhetoric - Edward H Friedman

Life’s Pilgrim: El peregrino en su patria - Alexander Samson

Novelas a Marcia Leonarda - Ali Rizavi

La Dorotea: a Tragicomedy in Prose - Xavier Tubau

Lope as Icon - David McGrath

A Modern Day Fénix: Lope de Vega’s Cinematic Revivals - Duncan Wheeler

Lope in Translation: Opening the Closed Book - David Johnston

Translations of Titles

Guide to Further Reading

Bibliography