La prueba de los ingenios, by Lope de Vega, edited by DeLys Ostlund, Portland State University.
The Baroque drama La prueba de los ingenios touches on themes still popular today including homoerotic desire, transvestism, and the equality of women. Primarily through the character of Florela, Lope de Vega presents a defense of women in response to the misogynist criticism found in Juan Huarte de San Juan's Examen de ingenios para las ciencias, which argued that women were incapable of ingenio. Florela unequivocally demonstrates otherwise.
La prueba was first published in 1617, when Lope included it as the first play of the first collection of his works whose publication he oversaw. In spite of this prominent position in Lope’s corpus, the play is comparatively unknown. In the introduction to this edition, Ostlund points to the themes it addresses as a contributing factor to its relative obscurity.
As gender issues captivate the modern scholarly and mainstream communities more than ever before, interest in La prueba has increased considerably over the last two decades, as evidenced by the growing body of critical studies discussed in the introduction. However, the text itself has not been readily available until now.
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DeLys Ostlund is a professor of Spanish and Associate Dean for Faculty in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. She received her PhD in Spanish Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Series: Ediciones críticas, #91
ISBN 978-1-58871-308-7 (PB, 164 pp.) $25