The Late Lope: Sevillian Chapbooks (1621-1696)

Abstract

From the corpus of broadsheets appeared in the Seville presses between 1621 and 1696 and claimed to be by Lope de Vega, we attempt to reconstruct the strategies devised in relation to the figure of the Fénix and to the publishing sector in Seville during the mid seventeenth century. This unique time-frame allows us to explore the differences, in terms of publishing houses as well as of authorship, perceived between the broadsheets of Lope de senectute and those of the post mortem period. Starting from the assumptions of the sociology of literature and of the descriptive bibliography and considering the idea of the author’s self-fashioning, we present an image of Lope as a publishing subject that all of his life strives to control what we could call his literary image. After his death, this same image becomes a hallmark that generates large incomes for the peripheral publishers.