Lope's Dialogic Imagination: Writing Other Voices of "Monolithic" Spain

The debate on whether Lope de Vega was a propagandist or an accomplished artist whose work reflects the traditions and values of his era has often centered about Lope's treatment of Spanish minority groups in his theater. A close investigation of his attention to these cultural "others" reveals a wide range of approaches to dealing with the alterity in the society of his day, particularly with the Jewish "other". By applying Mikhail Bakhtin's concepts of otherness in society, language and authorship to our study of Lope's plays about Spanish Jews, we can gain new understanding of the intricate relationship between society and artistry in his works. The examination of two plays, one from the age of convivencia, Las paces de los reyes y la judía de Toledo, and another from the edad conflictiva, El niño inocente de La Guardia, reveals a variety of treatment for the Jewish "other" in Lope's works. At times Lope's characters speak with monologic voices of the monolithic national culture, but on numerous occasions that discourse expresses an otherness that is not of the dramatist or the dominant society. Lope shows us, in Bakhtin's terms, his "dialogic imagination". It is the ability to hear other voices and to "write" them into his works that makes Lope more than a mere propagandist. (CS)