Fray Luis de León and Garcilaso de la Vega: Renaissance Poetry
Fray Luis de León
Fray Luis de León imposed a Christian humanism, reconciling Platonic forms with classical and Renaissance religious themes.
Works in Verse
His poetic work is quite short, consisting of less than 40 poems that circulated in manuscript until Quevedo. They are grouped into three periods:
- Poems written before entering prison: Ode to the Retired Life and Prophecy of the Tagus. They show Fray Luis in the classic sense, expressing loneliness, longing, and scorn for worldly pleasures.
- Verses composed in jail: Night on the Ascent and To the Tenth Out of Jail. In these works, he laments the injustice of his incarceration.
- Works written after prison: Ode to Salinas and Ode to Felipe Ruiz reveal a certain spiritual mysticism.
Poetic Ideas and Influences
The predominant themes in his poetry are nature, longing for the countryside at night, and music. All originate from the classical Neoplatonic, Pythagorean, or Stoic traditions.
- Neoplatonism: He adopted the ideal vision of a universe ruled by harmony.
- Pythagorean: He accepted that everything can be reduced to numbers, including celestial bodies, and that the universe is perfect harmony.
- Stoic: He adopted the philosophy of the Golden Mean, living in the natural order and the ability to meet the challenges of life.
From these ideas comes the search for a restful life in his Ode to Life, in which he develops the beatus ille theme and the idea of flight from the world.
Style
He employs the lyre invented by Garcilaso, which allows for multiple variations in his odes. Several of his poems are addressed to a second person. There is perfect symmetry in the construction of stanzas and a careful selection of lexis, asyndeton, polysyndeton, alliteration, and hyperbaton.
Garcilaso de la Vega
Garcilaso de la Vega is the prototype of the Renaissance gentleman: a soldier and poet who embodies the ideals of arms and letters.
His poetic career has three creative periods:
- Poetry influenced by songs: Alternating with octosyllabic compositions in the first Italian forms. His verses lack Petrarchan elements, abound in themes of courtly love poetry, and usually employ word games.
- Petrarchan stage: He internalizes love, describing his feelings and using word games.
- Creative fulfillment: The fruit of his stay in Italy and his approach to classical authors provides compositions with natural expressiveness and formal sobriety.
Work, Poetic Themes, and Style
Work: Prepared by his friend Boscán, his work is scarce. It includes an epistle in verse, two elegies, three eclogues, five songs, thirty-eight sonnets, and samples of traditional poetry. His sonnets signify the acclimatization of this composition to Spanish literature. They include: While of Rose and Lily, Passing the Spirited Sea Leandro, Beautiful Nymphs in the River Tucked, etc.
The works that reveal further artistic perfection are Eclogue I and III. In the first, the shepherds Salicio laments the absence of his beloved Galatea, while Nemoroso mourns his beloved Elisa. In Eclogue III, written in stanzas, the poet recreates his own experience of love. The subject becomes the embroidery of one of the four nymphs of the Tagus, reflected in his canvases of stories of love and death.
Poetic themes: The predominant theme is love, which shows Petrarchan traces with Neoplatonic traits, such as the indifference of the beloved. Other themes include nature in stylish surroundings, where characters show love scenes and appear as confidants who listen to and console the shepherds in their grief.
Style: The first stage is marked by the typical resources of antithesis in poetry, songs, competitions, and word games. He then adjusts his poetic language to the Renaissance ideals of naturalness and elegance.