Duque de Rivas’ El desengaño en un sueño: A Contradictory Repudiation of Romanticism

Although the Duque de Rivas did not live to see the debut of his drama El desengaño en unsueño , according to many friends and biographers the drama was his favourite dramatic work. Despite the author's feelings for it, the play continues to suffer from decades of scholarly neglect. The drama appears to be a harsh condemnation of the author's previous rebellion against paternal authority, or the AntiguoRégimen. In this essay, however, I argue that while Rivas was indeed becoming more ideologically conservative at the time he was writing El desengaño en un sueño, the presentation of paternal authority is more complex than critics have previously acknowledged, that a closer reading of the drama alongside his earlier drama Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino suggests a continued ambivalence on Rivas’ part towards paternal authority and that, in many ways, the hero Lisardo is more of a liberal Romantic than his mestizo predecessor.