Renaissance Lyric: Poetry of the 16th Century
Traditional and Italianate Poetry
The 16th century saw the continuation of predominantly octosyllabic poetry with a cultish tone. Traditional ballads and lyrical songs remained popular and began to be collected in writing. Italianate poetry, influenced by Petrarch, emerged as a representative form of the educated Renaissance lyric.
In the early years of the century, poets like Boscan and Garcilaso assimilated Italian metrics, formal concerns, Neoplatonism, and classical influences, incorporating mythological and pastoral themes. The most important poet of this current was Garcilaso de la Vega, whose work renewed poetic form and themes.
Garcilaso de la Vega (1501-1536)
Garcilaso de la Vega was a Renaissance man of noble birth, a descendant of the Marquis of Santillana. At the king’s wedding to Isabella of Portugal, he met one of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies, who inspired much of his love poetry. His humanist education included knowledge of Greek, Latin, Tuscan, and French, and he had read Virgil, Horace, and Italian Renaissance poets like Petrarch and Sannazaro. He died at the age of 36.
Garcilaso’s Works
Garcilaso’s work was brief, like his life. His sonnets, about forty in number, and three Eclogues stand out. The first Eclogue is the most valued. In it, the shepherds Salicio and Nemoroso express their grievances in a sweet and bucolic natural setting. Salicio mourns the scorn of his beloved Galatea, while Nemoroso mourns the death of Elisa. Both shepherds represent Garcilaso himself, singing to his beloved during her lifetime or after her death, as Petrarch had done in his songbook. The composition reflects the contained and melancholic emotional tone of the Renaissance. (It consists of 421 verses and is written in various meters.)
The second Eclogue recounts the unfortunate love story of the shepherdess Camila and Albanio. It is the longest eclogue, the first he wrote, and the least cheerful (singing to the militia).
The third Eclogue presents four nymphs weaving tragic love stories into a tapestry amidst a gentle, bucolic nature. The first three stories refer to mythological characters, and the fourth tells of the love between Nemoroso and Elisa. The eclogue ends with the singing of two shepherds (octaves, set on the banks of the Tagus River).
Garcilaso also composed four Petrarchan songs, the ode “To the Flower of Cnidus,” two “Elegies,” and the “Epistle to Boscan.” In 1543, the widow of poet Juan Boscan published the works of both poets in Barcelona, and Garcilaso’s poetry quickly gained wide circulation. Within a few years, it was being studied as a model at the University of Salamanca, and in 1580, Fernando de Herrera produced a critical edition of his work as if it were a classic. Garcilaso became one of the most admired poets: like Manrique, he became a poet’s poet, frequently cited and imitated.
Garcilaso’s work brought about formal and thematic renewal in poetry. He transformed and renewed metrics, the way love and nature were addressed.
Love and Nature in Garcilaso’s Poetry
Love is the central theme in Garcilaso’s lyrics. He is considered one of the great love poets, following the Petrarchan style by combining the theme of love with real-life experiences. His lyricism is characterized by a restrained and severe expression of this feeling. Garcilaso initiated the intimate theme of love in poetry, which made him a master for other poets who later adopted love as a central theme.
Garcilaso also incorporated nature into Castilian poetry, especially in the Eclogues. The natural element becomes as important as the dialogue between shepherds or mythological characters in the stories. The length of the Eclogues allows for detailed descriptions of feelings and nature.
Garcilaso’s Style
Garcilaso created a distinguished and natural poetic language, free of affectation or archaisms. He pursued elegant expression and rejected rhetoric or conceptual difficulty. His renewal of the epithet is essential, creating a more leisurely pace in the sentence and providing plasticity and color to the poem. He also adapted the hendecasyllable in all its rhythmic and strophic forms. From Garcilaso onward, the sonnet became a basic stanza in Castilian poetry, and it can be said that all later poetry was influenced by his work.
Lyricism in the Second Half of the 16th Century
In the second half of the 16th century, lyricism lost the ideals of universality and paganism of the previous period, becoming blended with and assimilated into Catholicism. This period is known as the Second Christian Renaissance. Two schools or poetic tendencies emerged:
- School of Salamanca: Fray Luis de León was the central figure, promoting a balance between content and form, an intimate tone, moral themes, and sobriety. This school tended towards natural and elegant lyrical language, focusing on moral and philosophical issues. Other representatives include Francisco de Aldana and Francisco de la Torre.
- School of Seville: This school was more inclined towards rhetoric, with poetry focused on the theme of love and abundant formal color. The central figure was Fernando de Herrera, who sought formal beauty, a bright and resonant style, and addressed profane themes.
Alongside these two schools, religious poetry flourished, including ascetic poetry, which focused on achieving moral perfection, and mystical poetry, reflecting the union of the soul with the divine. St. John of the Cross is the best representative of this type of poetry.