The Elaboration of an Episode from the Quijote in the Dorotea

THE comic power of the Quijote was apparently early impressed on 17th century readers. Like Curtius' topoi from Antiquity,1 episodes from the great parody contributed to subsequent narratives and became themselves topoi for the enrichment of literature after Cervantes. Yet their importance as topoi, or as clear, conscious motifs, may be minimized, at times almost negated, by the new uses they are put to. In the hands of the complex Renaissance poet Lope de Vega, a comic motif from Cervantes is literally turned inside out, and made to serve a new function. To study such a transformation in the Dorotea is to see at once the great complexity of literary transmission and the extraordinary involvement of the creative process, both psychologically and culturally, in Lope. Act IV, Scene 2 of the Dorotea introduces the following mock sonnet

Art · Elaboration · Humanities · Early Modern Spanish Literature · History · Psychology