Literary Analysis: Irony and Garcilaso de la Vega's Poetry

Irony in Lazarillo and the Ironic Protagonist

The narrator-protagonist addresses himself with subtle irony when describing how much he has suffered. He is also ironic concerning his final status and marriage.

Masters of Irony

• The Blind Man: "I was informed that he was healthy and cured," when in December, he washed him with wine, causing him wounds.
• Maqueda, the Cleric: "Take, eat, triumph, for the world is yours," by giving him uses that the bread he had previously gnawed on had given him.
• The Squire: "God has put me in your path after me, a good prayer," knowing that with him, misfortune was going to happen.

Topics

• Honor: It depended on the consideration that others had of someone.
• Religion: Five of the masters belonged to the ecclesiastical estate.

Garcilaso de la Vega

In 1543, the works of Garcilaso de la Vega and Boscan were published, featuring the first Spanish Petrarchan lyric poetry. The short work of Garcilaso was the most important Spanish lyric revolution and became the model for later poets.

Theme and Poetic Evolution

The theme is love par excellence, expressed from melancholy and sadness due to frustration or lack of love. He relates nature, presented in its perfection with the topic of the locus amoenus, as a reflection of the poet's inner world, sheltering his pain.

In other poems, he addresses friendship, destiny, fortune, or the necessity to dominate the passions, preferably with an ethical tone derived from Stoicism. His Petrarchan style poems show the influence of the position and the songbook of the Valencian poet Ausiàs March. They are written in a disjointed and torn tone, and resources from the song lyric predominate. From 1532, Garcilaso's contact with the Petrarchan possibility increased. In these years, he incorporated the most significant works of the classical tradition into his work.

The Eclogues

In these lyrical compositions and arrangements, the shepherds expose their love in an idealized environment. The three eclogues share the theme of suffering for love, whether due to loss or unrequited affection.

• Eclogue I: It serves as an introduction and contains dedicatory monologues from two shepherds, Salicio and Nemoroso, who express their pain over the rejection and death of their beloved.
• Eclogue II: It stands out for its heterogeneity and metrical variety. The first part contains the pain and madness of unrequited love. The second part contains a dialogue between two shepherds at dawn. It employs chained tercets, hendecasyllables with internal rhyme, and stanzas.
• Eclogue III: It tells the story of four nymphs weaving by the Tagus River; three relate mythological stories, and the fourth refers to the death of Elis, the beloved of Nemoroso.

Style

His poetic language is characterized by an aspiration to natural expressiveness, which especially highlights the use of epithets. Also noteworthy are the metaphors, personifications, and hyperbatons.