The Influence of Petrarch and an Analysis of Lazarillo de Tormes
The Influence of Petrarch on Spanish Literature
Petrarch’s Impact
Francesco Petrarca significantly influenced fifteenth-century Spanish poets like the Marquis of Santillana, Juan de Mena, and later Juan Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega. Petrarch harmonized the Provençal heritage with the lyrical and classical poetry of his Italian contemporaries.
Petrarch’s Poetic Innovations
Petrarch’s poetry introduced a new method of analyzing the individual’s inner world, encompassing themes of love, female beauty, and nature. His work also incorporated innovative formal aspects.
The Hendecasyllable
While Castilian writers had introduced the hendecasyllable in the fifteenth century, it was Juan Boscán who gave it momentum in the sixteenth century, encouraging its use alongside Garcilaso de la Vega. Together, they combined the hendecasyllable with lyrical stanzas common in Italy.
Other Italian Forms
- Terza Rima: Similar to Castilian poetry, Boscán adopted this form.
- Lira: This stanzaic form was also used by Fray Luis de León and San Juan de la Cruz.
- Octava Real: Introduced by Juan Boscán, this form features eight lines with a specific rhyme scheme.
- Canzone: Used as a strophic song in Petrarchan poetry.
- Sonnet: Cultivated since the previous century by poets like the Marquis of Santillana.
- Sapphic Stanza: Of Italian origin, consisting of three eleven-syllable lines and one five-syllable line.
Themes and Motifs
The Lyric Reborn
Renaissance lyric poetry drew upon themes and motifs from classical antiquity and the Italian poetic model.
- Love: Addressed from the perspective of courtly love, with the beloved’s beauty described through metaphors drawn from nature.
- Nature: Renaissance love scenes often unfolded in a locus amoenus, reminiscent of pastoral works where shepherds discuss their experiences and lament their unrequited loves.
- Mythology: Renaissance verses incorporated figures from Greco-Roman mythology, often depicting love stories between gods, nymphs, heroes, and other mythical beings.
Garcilaso de la Vega: A Key Figure
Garcilaso de la Vega embodies the ideal Renaissance courtier: a man of both arms and letters, a soldier, and a poet. Having directly experienced Italian Renaissance poetry, he introduced and successfully established the Petrarchan model in Spain.
Garcilaso’s Poetic Works
His body of work is relatively small, including poems in octosyllabic verse, forty sonnets, three eclogues, five songs, an epistle, and two elegies. However, these compositions significantly reoriented Spanish lyric poetry.
Themes of Love and Loss
A central theme in Garcilaso’s poetry is the pain of love caused by rejection or the death of the beloved. To express this pain, he often composed poems featuring imagined stories protagonized by shepherds or mythological figures, using their voices to channel his own emotions.
An Analysis of Lazarillo de Tormes
Date and Authorship
The earliest surviving editions of Lazarillo de Tormes (Burgos, Antwerp, and Alcalá de Henares) date back to 1554. It’s likely that the first edition appeared one or two years earlier, with the book potentially composed around 1540. The authorship remains uncertain, with potential candidates including Fray Juan de Ortega, Alfonso Valdés, and Cervantes de Salazar.
Sources and Inspiration
Lazarillo de Tormes has been linked to various works, including:
- The Golden Ass
- The fourth book of The Adventures of the Valiant Knight Esplandián
- Epistolary novels
- Folk tales
Plot Summary
Lazarillo, a child forced to leave his family, becomes a servant to several masters. His life unfolds in three stages:
- Childhood: Serving a blind beggar, a priest, and a squire.
- Adolescence: Serving a friar, a master painter, a pardoner, and a seller of papal indulgences. Lazarillo navigates challenging situations and learns new tricks of deception and falsehood, all while enduring continued suffering.
- Youth: Serving a chaplain, an archpriest, and a bailiff. Lazarillo finally finds stability, establishes a profession, and achieves a measure of success, marrying and creating a home.
Unlike typical novel protagonists who are fully formed from the outset, Lazarillo evolves through his experiences and adventures. Notably, he faces these challenges alone; women are largely absent from his life, and he exists in a world devoid of love. The urban setting of the novel further enables the prevalence of deceit and corruption.
Narrative Structure and Style
Lazarillo de Tormes is structured as an epistolary novel, presented as a letter written by the protagonist. Unlike the dialogue-heavy pastoral novels, this work is a monologue. The adult Lazarillo recounts his story to”Your Grace” who has requested an explanation of his”case” Lazarillo’s letter is an act of obedience to a superior. He recounts his childhood adventures to explain and justify his adult personality.
Expressive Resources
: The narrator of the Lazarillo makes employment humorísticode some passages Evangelio.En the story also notes the use of games palabras.Para get the ironic effect, it uses the diminutive and the antithesis. The irony in Lazarillo: The irony only perceived basis of the context and depends on the intentions of the issuer and the playability of Lazarillo interlocutor.En all become ironic: the narrator, characters and author. Irony of the protagonist: the narrator protagonist irony directed towards yourself irony of the masters of the masters of irony is recipient Lazarus himself, “the Blind cleric-Maqueda /-the squire / irony of the author: the author directs his irony toward Lazarus adult /Topics: the fundamental issues of Lazarillo de Tormes is the honor and religion: – honor: the honor depended on the consideration that other people had about a person, and was a typical phenomenon of Lazarillo época.El begins and ends with a matter of honor (the “case”) / – religion: five of the masters of Lazarus belong to the ecclesiastical establishment, generally at its strata inferiores.Fundamentalmente, condemning the exploitation of poor people by the vile and ignorant clergy.