Petrarch’s Influence on Renaissance Poetry and Garcilaso de la Vega
Petrarch and the Renaissance
Petrarch was a fourteenth-century Italian poet who embodied the ideals of humanism. He wrote several works in Latin with humanist inspiration, but his historical importance is due to his compositions in the Romance language. His most famous work is the Songbook. Also in the vernacular are his Triumphs.
Triumphs
An allegorical poem composed in triplets (three-stanza poems, art and more heroic verse, rhyming the first with the third, leaving the second free, i.e., rhyme) in chains formed by six chapters of very unequal length. It addresses issues such as the triumphs of love, death, and fame.
Songbook
A collection consisting of over 350 poems on the theme of love. Although the poet called them hobbies, he selected and edited them throughout his life. This author was inspired by Laura de Noves, the ideal and idealized woman. The first part of this songbook is the anguish experienced by the poet of love, full of sensuality and life. In the second part, with the beloved dead, the poetry is most admirable.
Features of Petrarchism
- Themes: Medieval courtly love, the idealized lady, lost love, regret, classical poetic.
- Resources: Use of similes (e.g., subjective comparison and expressive, such as “the deer ran away”), comparisons, expressions, and classical myths to express the joys and sorrows of irreconcilable, distant, and impossible love. There is an interest in Greco-Latin and classical resources.
- Language: Polished, transparent, full of images, and there is a naturalness in style.
- New Metric Forms: Eleven-syllable verse. The most common composition is the sonnet (a poem consisting of two quatrains (verses of major art and ABBA rhyme) and two triplets), but also used are the silva (stanza with an indefinite number of verses, rhyme, and the rest is free), stay (heroic verse and seven-syllable verses with indefinite rhyme, and whatever the author chooses must be repeated throughout the composition), song, eclogue (the most famous are those of Virgil, and it is a Greco-Roman subgenre; the literary topic used is the locus amoenus, a pleasant place), ode (a poem of average length and serious matter), ballads, and madrigals.
Poetry: Traditional Spanish Poetry
In the fifteenth century, there was learned poetry and folk poetry. A sample of the first is court poetry and songs that used the octosyllabic verse. Popular poetry is expressed in romances. In the Cancionero General, compositions of courtly love and troubadour tradition abound.
Italianate Poetry
Features: Italian poetry is a renewal in Spanish poetry. The biggest innovation was the hendecasyllable, which could also be merged with seven syllables. In the hendecasyllable fall different stanzas: sonnets, triplets, stays, silvas, and liras. In this poem, there is an idealization of the beloved and an expression of love (a topic of courtly love). Bucolic and pastoral themes are developed intensively, and the poet expresses his feeling of love amidst an idealized nature and mythological references.
Garcilaso de la Vega
He embodies, for some, the ideal Renaissance man, the courtier. He served Charles V and is one of the most important poets of Spanish literature. This author cultivated two types of poetry of the period: traditional Castilian poetry (eight couplets) and Italianate poetry.
Features
Latin influence and Renaissance themes and forms. Authors such as Virgil, Ovid, and Petrarch influenced his poetry.
Poetic Language: It seeks to achieve transparency and clarity of expression and escape from elaborate affectation.
Topics: Locus amoenus, mythical landscape, beautiful and stylish. Carpe diem, the transience of life, and invites you to enjoy it while you can.
Eclogues
A poetic/lyrical subgenus characterized because the poetic characters are idealized shepherds. They are bucolic poems, compositions in which two or more pastors express their grievances of love amid an idealized nature.
Eclogue II was the first that the poet wrote. This is a poetry of circumstance since it served to gain support and favor of the noble house of Alba.
Eclogue I features the pastors Salicio and Nemoroso. Salicio complains about the infidelity of Galatea, and Nemoroso about Elisa’s death. The merger between the feeling, the nature, and the pastoral setting makes this poem one of his most famous compositions.
Eclogue III features four nymphs who embroider on the banks of the Tagus canvases that evoke many tragedies of love: three classical myths and a new love that the poet also raises to myth, Elisa and Nemoroso.