Lope de Vega El caballero de Olmedo and El perro del hortelano

 

Suggested Reading

 

Lope de Vega (Five Plays), Translated by Jill Booty with an introduction by R.D.F. Pring-Mill (New York 1961).

 

Andrist, D. D. 1989. Deceit Plus Desire Equals Violence.  New York:  Peter Lang.

 

Evans, P. W. 1983. ‘Peribañez and Ways of Looking at Golden Age Dramatic Characters’, in Romanic Review 74, 136-51.

                      1983. ‘Alonso’s Cowardice:  Ambiguities of Perspective in El caballero de Olmedo’, in Modern Language Review, 78, 68-78.

 

Marín, D. 1965. ‘La ambigüedad dramática en El caballero de Olmedo’, in Hispanófila, 24, 95-173.

 

McCrary, W. C. 1966. The Goldfinch and the Hawk:  a Study of Lope de Vega’s Tragedy.  Chapel Hill:  University of Carolina Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures.

 

McKendrick, M. 1974. Woman and Society in the Spanish Stage of the Golden Age:  A Study of the “mujer varonil”.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.

 

Weber de Kurlat, F. 1975. ‘El perro del hortelano, comedia palatina’, in Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 24, 339-363.

 

Wilson, M. 1972. ‘Lope as Satirist:  Two Themes in El perro del hortelano and related plays’, in Hispanic Review, 40, 271-82.

 

 

Essay titles

 

1          ‘The gendering of authority as female in El perro del hortelano leads to an astonishing confusion of sexual roles’.  Discuss.

2.         ‘Lope’s presentation of the lovers’ all-consuming passion in El caballero de Olmedo snatches tragedy from the jaws of parody’.  Discuss.

3.         ‘In a significant number of plays … either the woman oversteps her conventional role… or the man, more than unusually sensitive or intelligent, recoils’.  Discuss.

4.         ‘In El perro del hortelano Lope explores the dilemma that can occur between sexuality and decorum, between the innate self and the persona imposed upon the individual by society’s expectations’.  Discuss.

5.         ‘If there is a flaw in Alonso’s character, it is less likely to be connected with his behaviour as a lover than with his obsessive concern with heroics’.  Discuss.

6.         Discuss one of the following in two of Lope’s plays:

i.            love

ii.            honour

iii.            the presentation of women

7.            Examine the play of passion, self-interest and reason in El perro del hortelano.

8.            Examine the significance in El caballero de Olmedo of the episode of the goldfinch and the hawk.

9.         ‘Both El caballero de Olmedo and El perro del hortelano show us how close comedy sails to danger.  That one should end in disaster and the other in uneasy fulfilment merely reveals the arbitrariness of happy endings’.  Discuss.

10.       ‘It is important to the satirical purpose of El perro del hortelano that we sympathize with neither Diana nor Teodoro’.  Discuss.

11.       How do the supernatural elements in El caballero de Olmedo affect our judgement of don Alonso, his actions and his death?

12.       ‘There is too much of threat and violence in El perro del hortelano for us to be able to categorize it unequivocally as comedy’.  Discuss.

13.       ‘El caballero de Olmedo is a play that depicts good people behaving badly, so perhaps we should not be shocked when they end up paying for their misdemeanours’.  Discuss.

 

 

Rosemary Clark