La literatura como antídoto al etnocentrismo: Lope de Vega y la reinvención dramática de la frontera granadina en tiempos de la Reconquista [Literature as an antidote to ethnocentrism: Lope de Vega and the dramatic reinvention of the Granada border at the time of the Reconquest]

Abstract

This article analyzes a series of historical dramas, belonging to the theatrical microgenre of border comedies or Moorish comedies, where Lope poetically recreates the last years of the Reconquista and the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. Behind the literary game, particularly dense and rich in these historical dramas, inspired by the Romancero (fronterizo and morisco nuevo), and by the most relevant works of the time characterized by evident maurophilia, lies an ambiguous ideological discourse, which slightly deviates from the celebration of Spanish national identity conceived as an absolute and self-referential entity. Lope, mirroring himself in his characters, confronts with the Moorish question and more generally with the Peninsular Other, suggesting that the sharing of feelings and values peculiarly human as justice, honor, love and friendship, and the very unpredictability of life in the frontier world, brings us closer to the stranger, far from threatening our identity, in a flattering and tempting way.

Keywords

• lope de vega
• border comedies
• reconquista
• nasrid kingdom of granada
• moorish question
• maurophilia
• ethnocentrism
• otherness
• spanish language
• spanish literature