Spanish Poetry Renaissance: Currents, Themes, and Key Authors

Posted on Jan 5, 2025 in Latin

Poetry Renaissance: The Spanish Revival

The Spanish poetry renaissance saw two main currents:

  1. Traditional Poetry (15th Century)

    Oral popular poetry collected in anthologies called cancioneros, where popular and courtly poetry coexisted.

  2. Italian Cultural Influence

    Courtly poets continued cultivating the troubadour song, focused on courtly love. In the mid-century, the Romancero emerged, with a new artistic and worshipful character. During the time of Charles V (Italian Renaissance), the Italian style entered Spain. Lyric poetry flourished in Spanish, influenced by the Italian endecasilabo verse, used by Boscán and Garcilaso. Italian stanzas like the lira became fashionable, especially the sonnet, and the recovery of Greco-Latin idylls.

Key Themes:

  1. Love

    Love is idealized, influenced by Neoplatonism and Petrarchan concepts. It is seen as a virtue that elevates man from the material. The poet loves an idealized woman, often compared to a goddess. Love is a source of frustration because the author cannot reach his beloved and receives indifference or rejection.

  2. Nature

    Renaissance nature is gentle and harmonious, idealized as a setting for love scenes or mythological stories. In the second half of the century, nature becomes a refuge for the poet, offering calm and spiritual rest.

  3. Greek and Latin Myths

    Used as embellishing resources.

  4. Common Topics
    • Carpe diem: Enjoy the present day.
    • Collige, virgo rosas: Gather, maiden, the roses; enjoy the beauty before it fades.
    • Locus amoenus: A pleasant place; a green meadow with clear waters, serving as a refuge for the poet.
    • Aurea mediocritas: Golden mediocrity; praise for a moderate life, free from ambition.
    • Beatus ille: Happy is he; longing for a life away from chaos, in a peaceful and natural environment.

Style:

Elegant elaboration with naturalness, using the endecasilabo verse with a fluid and unhurried pace. New literary resources and poetics emerged.

Key Poets:

  1. Boscán, Juan
  2. Garcilaso de la Vega: The prototype of the Renaissance knight, harmonizing ideals of arms and letters. His poetic trajectory includes:
    1. Influence of the cancionero, using octosyllabic verse. Early works with Italian forms, but lacking Petrarchan elements, focusing on love topics and wordplay.
    2. The Petrarchan stage: imitating Petrarch, internalizing love, describing feelings, and using nature as a backdrop for reflection.
    3. Fullness: the creator of a style, influenced by his stay in Italy.

Other classical authors offered sobriety of form and expressive naturalness. Garcilaso’s poetry, prepared by Boscán, includes an epistle in verse, two elegies, three eclogues, five songs, 38 sonnets, and some traditional poetry samples. His sonnets are significant for the acclimatization of the composition in Spanish literature, mostly dealing with love. His three eclogues are perfect, with accurate metrics, and take place in an idealized nature. In these works, Garcilaso explains his feelings through his shepherds.

Period of Philip II (Christian Renaissance)

This period reflects the principles of nation and religion.

School of Salamanca:

Maximum Representative: Fray Luis de León

  1. Simple language with careful forms.
  2. Themes: nature, longing for the countryside, and the night.
  3. His ideas lead to the search for a peaceful life, developing the Beatus Ille topic and fleeing from the world.
  4. His desire for perfection and union with God approaches mystical experiences, but without reaching ecstasy.

Ascetic and Mystical Poetry:

Appears as a result of the Spanish religious tradition and the increase of religious principles. Asceticism (Fray Luis de León) explains the activities that man must perform to perfect himself and be saved. Mysticism comes after asceticism, showing how some people achieve direct contact with God. Key authors include San Juan de la Cruz and Teresa de Jesús.

The soul reaches perfection by uniting with God through:

  1. Purgative Way: The soul purifies its sins through sacrifice and penance.
  2. Illuminative Way: The soul abandons material things and submits to God.
  3. Unitive Way: The union of the soul with God produces a state of ecstasy, disconnecting from the surrounding world.

Mystical experiences cannot be expressed with human language, so poets use symbols, allegories, paradoxes, and antitheses.

Patriotic Poetry:

Represented by the Sevillian School, with Petrarchan influence:

  1. Loaded language and vocabulary.
  2. Love and patriotic themes, reflecting nationalistic spirit and exalting national heroism.
  3. Notable Author: Fernando de Herrera.