Guide to Further Reading

Summary

(Full publication details of the works mentioned in this section can be found in the bibliography.)

A figure as significant and fascinating as Lope Félix de Vega Carpio has predictably attracted the attention of numerous admirers over the centuries, with centenaries of his birth and death in particular leading to voluminous reassessments of his biography and the nature of his poetic genius. Nevertheless, one cannot help but be surprised at the number of obvious gaps in the scholarship and literature on his life and works. For the scholar the most egregious lack is of good critical editions of his oeuvre. Non-canonical plays often still have to be read in the nineteenth-century editions of Hartzenbusch and Menéndez y Pelayo, or the thirteen volumes of Cotarelo published between 1916 and 1930. However, the future in this respect looks brighter as the excellent and handsomely produced editions of the ProLope group at the Autónoma in Barcelona, which follow the order of the Partes, gradually remedy this problem. More popular editions, for example of plays such as La viuda valenciana, edited by Teresa Ferrer (Castalia) and the four Novelas a Marcia Leonarda, edited by Antonio Carreño, (Cátedra), are also helping to make Lope's works more readily available. And academic presses, such as Edition Reichenberger and Iberoamericana/Vervuert are also publishing high-quality editions, bibliographies and scholarly studies. The former has produced several editions over the past two decades of lesser-known Lope plays such as La quinta de Florencia, by Debra Collins Ames, as well as important bibliographical works by Marco Presotto and Maria Grazia Profeti, and the latter, Lope's epic poem, La hermosura de Angélica by Marcella Trambaioli, as well as the Rimas sacras, edited by Carreño and Sánchez Jiménez. Good, available scholarly editions of Lope's works will continue to underpin reassessments of his prose, poetry, drama, and indeed his biography.

The best brief introduction to Lope de Vega's life and works in English is Victor Dixon's chapter in The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature (ed. David T. Gies). A fine longer study in Spanish with the same scope is Felipe B. Pedraza Jinénez's Lope de Vega. This is more up-to-date than Francis C. Hayes's Lope de Vega, in the Twayne's World Author Series, although the latter volume is still useful for English-speaking readers.