When the shoe is not an object: the chinela as thing in Lope de Vega's El caballero de Olmedo

Abstract

This study conceives women's shoes in Lope de Vega's classic play El caballero de Olmedo [The Knight of Olmedo] to be what Bill Brown would call “things.” The first part of the article visualizes what an image of those shoes, or chinelas, might look like. It also contrasts Lope's treatment of chinelas in El caballero de Olmedo with another of his plays, Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña [Peribáñez and the Commander from Ocaña], and with a short play by Miguel de Cervantes. The second part of the essay elucidates how the chinelas are not an object in El caballero de Olmedo through which characters acquire subjectivity nor are they conventional inanimate objects. Instead, they play an active role as character. Lope dramatizes the characterization through the shoes’ belatedness; they always arrive too late because Lope has transformed them into other stage props – words on a piece of paper about chinelas and ribbons from the chinelas.