Virtuous Labor, Courtly Laborer: Canonization and a Literary Career in Lope de Vega's Isidro
In the course of one of early modern Europe's longest and most prolific literary careers, Lope de Vega (1562-1635) wrote numerous hagiographies, typically upon commission from a city council, an aristocrat, or a court official. Yet his saints' lives have received far less critical attention than his cloak-and-dagger comedias or his love lyrics.' Scholars, in general, have emphasized questions about how creative authorial energies shaped or altered literary forms that enjoy high prestige in our own time. Lope's arte nuevo that transformed the comedia de capa y espada fits this preference, while his numerous hagiographies represent a now marginal literary form. Moreover, the devotional works written on commission highlight Lope as a writer whose pen bolstered or depended upon political and religious
Capital Accumulation and Canon Formation in Lope de Vega's De cosario a cosario
This article follows the threads of literary and topical allusions to interpret an underappreciated comedia madrileña, De cosario a cosario. Its action turns on two young nobles who set out to trick one another, each understating a large fortune and pretending to undergo bloodlettings to cure lovesickness. Their eventual marriage gives life to the play's title, a recycled refrán whose provenance infuses the love plot and concluding marriage with irony: Celestina declares that "de cosario a cosario no se pierden sino los barriles" when she cajoles Areúsa with a reminder of the "professional courtesy" that binds dishonest negotiators. In addition to this literary allusion, the comedia's title signifier invites readings that take into account the other symbolic dimensions of the "corsario/cosario." Lope himself chronicled the life of one such antihero in his La Dragontea, a work that suffered censorship because its account of Francis Drake's death ran afoul of prohibitions against writing about recent, American history. Despite limitations due to censorship, Lope continued to write about the New World's impact on his own society. Though it does not narrate recent, American history in the manner of La Dragontea, De cosario a cosario skips ahead one step, portraying the social consequences of early-modern globalization. That is, the court city that lives on the frenetic extraction of American silver will find its systems of values irrevocably distorted in favor of the cosario/corsario, who lives and trades on the spoils of empire without working.
Shoeless Joe: Fantasy and the Humor of Fellow-Feeling
In his essay on Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Thomas Carlyle writes of a humor that manifests itself in smile rather than laughter. "Richter is a man of mirth," says Carlyle, whose humor is "capricious . . . quaint . . . [and] heartfelt" (15). The three adjectives represent for Carlyle the essence of what he terms "true humor" because they suggest Richter's enormous respect for humanity. "True humor," he goes on to say, "springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt, its essence is love; it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper" (17). These smiles are not Hobbesian smirks of superiority1 but genuine signs of compassion for, sympathy toward, and empathy with the object of the humor. Carlyle further provides a direct link between humor and both pathos and nobility; the link is the smile of the caring man. For Carlyle, this smile is one of "fellow-feeling":