The Scatological View of Love in the Theater of Lucas Fernandez

Recent criticism has noted the similar treatment of secular love in the primitive Castillan theater and in the contemporary lyric and prose romance genres. Focusing on the plays of Lucas Fernández, my study notes the presence therein of imagery that treats unrequited love not as a spiritual malady but as a purely physical disorder. The rustics in Fernández' plays describe the pain of love as a malfunction of the digestive system and can neither understand nor be understood by the noble characters who use the imagery of courtly love to describe similar pain. The scatological conception of love held by Fernández' peasant characters would seem to reinforce the view that they are figures of mockery and scorn to playwright and audience alike. I qualify this notion somewhat, using the fact that most of Fernández' plays are wedding plays and referring to the work of Mikhail Bakhtin on the carnivalesque style of medieval humor, with its emphasis on the «material bodily principle», to argue that the role of the rustic is more positive than has been assumed.