Spanish Renaissance Literature: Garcilaso, Fray Luis, San Juan
Garcilaso de la Vega
As a poet and a man, Garcilaso de la Vega can be considered the prototype of the courtier: gallant, conversationalist, humanist, and poet. He renewed love poetry concepts and introduced a new sensibility, recovering classical forms and introducing new metrical forms.
Topics
Key issues are:
- Petrarch’s love-conception: It is an impossible love inspired by his muse. Garcilaso always presented his beloved with the Petrarchan canon of beauty.
- Idealized nature, refined and harmonious: Fresh meadows, crystalline rivers…
- Mythology: Garcilaso recreates myths that combine love, despair, and death.
Style
Garcilaso is characterized by a sober and simple style.
- Retrieves the classic literary topics of carpe diem to insist on the passage of time and locus amoenus to describe an idealized nature that creates an environment for lovers.
- Emphasizes the use of metaphors, the epithet, alliteration, and personification.
Trajectory
The trajectory of Garcilaso distinguishes three stages:
- The influence of Hispanic poetry: Love poems written without attention to the outside world or the physical traits of the beloved Petrarchan mode.
- Petrarchism-assimilation and the new art: Petrarch had a great impact on Garcilaso. From him, he took verses and themes.
- Fullness: After the death of his beloved, he composed some of his best works.
Works
Garcilaso wrote three Eclogues, two elegies, one letter, four songs, 38 sonnets, and songs in Castilian verse 8. In his songs and sonnets, he mixed the Petrarchan style and themes of the Castilian song tradition.
Eclogues:
- Eclogue 1: This is the most significant because it combines perfectly the passion of love and perfection of form. The poet casts his own experience of love in two shepherds, Salicio and Nemoroso.
- Eclogue 2: This is the most extensive. It consists of two parts. The first relates the unhappy love affair between Camilla and the shepherd Albanio, the second is an allegorical apology from the house of Alba.
- Eclogue 3: This is a poem written in stanzas. Four nymphs embroider scenes depicting love stories: the first three weave mythological stories and the fourth that of the nymph Elisa and the shepherd Nemoroso.
Lyric Poetry in the Second Renaissance
Pope Pius IV began the Counter-Reformation in response to Protestant criticism. Spanish youth were forbidden to study in foreign universities, and reading was closely watched.
Poetic Movements of the Second Renaissance
- The Petrarchan lyric: Poets who followed this trend showed a preference for the themes of love and a more ornate and rhetorical language.
- The Horatian lyric: During the reign of Philip II, some authors favored a poetry that cultivated moral issues. Formally, the favorite verse of these authors is the lyre, and their language is terse and clipped. Francisco de la Torre and Fray Luis de León belong to this school.
- Religious lyric: In religious literature, two trends are distinguished:
- The Ascetic: Seeks to improve people through a lifetime of effort and sacrifice. Fray Luis de León and St. John of the Cross are key figures.
- Mysticism: Aspires to the soul’s union with God. This process takes place in three stages or paths: the purgative (the soul is stripped of earthly ties), the illumination (which provides peace through the presence of God), and the unitive (the mystical union of the soul with God). San Juan of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Jesus are key figures.
Fray Luis de León
Topics
Recurring themes in his work are the desire for solitude and retreat from the bustle of city life by taking refuge in nature, and the pursuit of peace and knowledge as an approach to God.
Style
His poetry is composed mostly of odes. He used the lira verse form.
The main features are:
- Sense of humor and irony
- Extraordinary linguistic skill
- Use of the second person and enumerations
- Rhetorical exclamations and questions
- Use of symbols related to nature
Work
- Ode to Life Retired
- Ode to Francisco Salinas
- Ode to a Calm Night
- Ode to the Ascension of Mount Pit
- Prophecy of the Names
- The Perfect Wife
San Juan de la Cruz
San Juan de la Cruz, together with Teresa of Avila, is a leading figure in the religious literature of the second half of the 16th century.
Topics
San Juan’s work reflects a religious inspiration. He seeks to communicate his mystical experience.
Style
He uses symbols and allegories. For example, he uses the image of the union between a man and a woman through marriage to symbolize the mystical union between the soul and God.
His poems present a wealth of comparisons and metaphors, filled with simplicity, beauty, and tenderness.
Work
His poetry is short but impactful. His work includes some traditional poems and three mystical poems written from jail.
- Dark Night of the Soul
- Spiritual Canticle (explains the process of the mystical way)
- Living Flame of Love