Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-06, Section: A, page: 1577.

Adviser: Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria.

Lope de Vega has been considered the creator of modern lyrical drama and one of its quintessential practitioners. His plays are peopled by idealized characters ruled by love and honor, and drawn from abstract literary doctrines. This dissertation examines Lope's auto-critical discourse as it develops toward the configuration of the Spanish Golden Age comedia as a genre. I analyze here, however, the author's reaction to the orthodox doctrinal models he usually favors. Lope, in a way working against himself, bares the limitations of a genre he has created by introducing literary counterparts to dramatic poetry, to the basic principles of the ars amandi, and to the conceptual structure of the comedia. The subversive inscription of antipoetical factors within the formal structure of the drama allows me to identify a picaresque anti-comedia within the dramatic corpus. The isolation and description of these factors are the main goals of the dissertation.

Chapter one is a doctrinal survey of Lope's ambivalent reactions to the established principles concerning the objectives of art within the context of nature. In Chapter two I apply Lope's encompassing view of nature and art to the play El rufian Castrucho. In this play, the poet introduces an anti-hero as the protagonist with the intent of overturning all traditional codes pertaining to the comedia. The play seeks legitimization, as does the main character, in the dramatic performance. Chapter three exposes the structural and conceptual marginality of Lope's El anzuelo de Fenisa. It proposes the possibility of a textual dialogue between this comedia and the novel La picara Justina, by Francisco Lopez de Ubeda. The demystified feminine figure of Fenisa is the allegory for this marginal form that could be considered an anti-comedia. Chapter four reflects on the potential acquisition of power of a genre through the adoption of the masculine narrative model, as is the case in picaresque literature, as opposed to the feminine, submissive nature of poetry as exemplified by the traditional comedia. The final objective of this study is to claim a reevaluation of texts usually left out of Lope's canon, to be empowered and recognized as representative of a hybrid genre that could be identified as picaresque comedias.