Renaissance Lyric Poetry: Italian Influences and Spanish Development

Renaissance Lyric Poetry: An Introduction

Renaissance Lyric: First Italian Literary Influences. The works of Garcilaso de la Vega exemplify this period.

Poetic Currents of the Early Renaissance

• Traditional Lyric Ballads: Popular poetry flourished during the 16th century.
• Cancion Traditional: Castilian ballads often dealt with unrequited love.
• Romances: Featured in the Cancionero de Romances.

Educated Lyric in Castilian Verse

• Hernando del Castillo
• The most prominent representative of this trend was Cristóbal de Castillejo, who cultivated octosyllabic verse and opposed Italianate innovations.

Italianate Lyric

Juan Boscán attempted to introduce Italian literary trends into Spanish poetry. Boscán sought help from Garcilaso de la Vega.

Italian Influences:

• Petrarch: Supreme Love
• Castiglione-Basalt: The Courtier

New Metric Forms:

• Hendecasyllable and octosyllable
• Triplets, Sonnet (ABBA ABBA CDC CDC), Ottava rima (ABABABCC), Lira (7a11B7a7b11B), and Stanzas (heptasyllabic and hendecasyllabic verses)

Themes:

Locus Amoenus, nature, mythology, Ubi Sunt, and love.

Garcilaso de la Vega

Garcilaso de la Vega is considered the prototype of a courtier: gallant, a good conversationalist, a humanist, a musician, a poet, and a soldier. His poetry renews concepts of love and introduces a new sensitivity.

Topics:

• Petrarchan conception of love: impossible love
• Idealized and harmonious nature
• Mythology: used to express feelings

Style:

Carpe Diem and Locus Amoenus. Use of metaphor, epithet, hyperbaton, alliteration, and personification.

Three Stages:

• Influence of Hispanic lyric (songbooks)
• Assimilation of new art and Petrarchism
• Fullness

Works:

Sonnets, songs, elegies (his work is not very extensive).

Lyric in the Second Renaissance

Reign of Felipe II in the second half of the 16th century. Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation (Fray Luis de León).

Petrarchan Lyric

Poets who followed this trend showed a preference for more ornate and rhetorical language in love issues.

Horatian Lyric

Some authors inclined towards poetry that cultivated moral issues. Formally, the beloved stanza of these authors is the lira, and their language is terse and clipped.

Religious Lyric

Within this literature, ascetic and mystical literature are distinguished, representing two parts of the possible union of the soul with God before death.

Ascetic:

Perfection of life through holistic efforts and sacrifice.

Mystical:

Union of the soul with God in three stages: Purification (the soul is stripped of earthly bonds), Illumination (peace), and Union (the soul unites with God).

Fray Luis de León

Topics:

• Desire for solitude and retirement from the hustle of urban life, taking refuge in nature
• Search for peace
• Knowledge as a way of approaching God
• Yearning for virtue to dominate human passions
• Beatus Ille: happy is he
• Contempt of court and praise of the village

Style:

Poetry, especially in his odes. Compositions primarily in lira. Stylistic features:

• Humor and irony
• Special linguistic perfection
• Enumerations, interrogations, enjambments (rhythm)
• Symbols expressing emotions of nature: river, wind, night, air, forest, port...
• Epithets, personification, and metaphor (density of meanings hidden behind the silence of his odes)
• Naturalness and elaborate elegance.

Works:

Ode to Retired Life, Ode to Francisco Salinas, Noche Serena, Ode to the Ascension, Prophecy of the Tagus