Poética y política de la maravilla: las maravillas del mundo antiguo en Lope de Vega

This article studies the presence of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in the works of Lope de Vega, an author who was particularly fond of the topic and skillful in its usage. Our article examines the appearance of the list from the end of the sixteenth century to 1634, and proposes some reasons for Lope's love for this topic. We explain which is the state of the art on the subject before focusing on Lope’s lyrical poetry. In particular, we begin examining Rimas (1604), a book in which Lope included two sonnets on the wonders. These poems have a peculiar dispositio which we consider the structural basis of Lope’s take on the wonders. Next, we study two small appearances in La Filomena (1621) and La Circe (1624), and, finally, a burlesque variant of this structure in Rimas de Tomé de Burguillos (1634), in a poem which allows us to propose a hypothesis concerning the origin of Lope’s idea. Taking this information into consideration, we examine Lope’s theater, which we divide into two large stages separated by 1609, the year in which Lope published Jerusalén conquistada and must have written La octava maravilla. These stages are useful to analyze the Seven Wonders in the corpus, to examine the evolution of that motif, and to reflect on its connections with the panegyric and with Lope's professional interests.