ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the pedagogy of love in two of Lope's dramas, La dama boba and El animal de Hungra, to examine how that sentiment influences female intellectual development. Lope does not frame the vexing question of female education in terms of morality and ethics, as did contemporary moralists and humanists. The chapter uses the term beastlike to describe the protagonists because both Finea in La dama boba and Rosaura, the eponymous beast from El animal de Hungra, are not depicted as simply unlettered but as dehumanized brutes. The first work, La dama boba, is a very humorous play with a serious and relevant message. The comedy foregrounds and debates women's complex positioning in patriarchal society and the latters repression of their intelligence and maturation. Despite its being a remarkably good play, El animal de Hungra is much less known and has been unjustly undervalued, thereby warranting greater concentration on it to discern how Lope represents learning.
