Ausiàs March: Life, Poetry, and Literary Impact
Ausiàs March (1397-1459)
Linked to Beniarjó and Gandia (Valencia), Ausiàs March came from a family of knights and poets, being the son of Pere March and nephew of Jaume March. He belonged to the minor nobility. As a knight, he participated in Alfonso V of Aragon’s military campaign in Italy (1420-1425) and was rewarded with land and privileges. In 1425, he was appointed Royal Falconer.
He married Isabel Martorell (sister of Joanot Martorell, author of Tirant lo Blanc). After Isabel’s death, he became involved in several lawsuits defending his rights as a feudal lord. He later married Joana Escorna, who also died childless. He had illegitimate children but none from his legitimate marriages.
In his poetry, we observe a desire to break with the troubadour tradition. He abandoned Occitan as the poetic language, and his work exhibits greater depth and sincerity. However, this break was not absolute.
Literary Framework
Ausiàs March’s poetry references several literary traditions:
- Troubadour Poetry: From which he borrowed literary topics.
- Scholastic Tradition: Evident in his ideas about love, pleasure, or virtue.
- Italian Humanism: Some passages recall Dante’s Commedia or Petrarch’s Canzoniere.
Attitude Towards Women
According to Martí de Riquer, the main difference between Ausiàs March’s poetry, that of the Provençal troubadours, and the Italian poets of the dolce stil novo lies in the attitude towards women:
- Troubadours: The lady held a feudal hierarchical superiority over the troubadour.
- Italian Poets (dolce stil novo): They saw women as the donna angelicata (angelic woman), whose virtue stemmed not from lineage but from nobility of heart (cor gentil).
- Ausiàs March: In contrast, he considered women as human beings with virtues, vices, emotions, and contradictions.
The Works of Ausiàs March
128 poems by this poet are preserved, typically divided by theme:
- Love Songs (Cants d’amor): (76 poems, often divided into cycles) March theorized about love, considering different types: sensual love (dominated by desire), intellectual/spiritual love, and love based on venal interests.
- Songs of Death (Cants de mort): (6 long poems) The poet laments the death of the beloved, pondering the soul’s fate, the pain of absence, the nature of death, etc.
- Moral Songs (Cants morals): Introspective analyses of his feelings and contradictions, drawing on scholastic philosophy.
- Spiritual Song (Cant espiritual): A religious poem of 224 verses where he addresses God, seeking help, repenting sins, and expressing fear of condemnation.
Poetic Style
His poems are dense and intense due to their condensed meanings. He employs an elliptical style with frequent hyperbaton, often making them difficult to understand. His poetic language is cultured but does not exclude colloquial expressions.
Ausiàs March uses various literary resources:
- Abundant comparisons.
- Intense metaphors, often featuring sad, macabre, or violent imagery.
- Allegory to express abstract ideas and emotions.
- Frequent use of imprecations, rhetorical questions, apostrophes, antitheses, paradoxes, personifications, and hyperboles.