Spanish Renaissance Lyric Poetry: Garcilaso, Fray Luis, San Juan
Garcilaso de la Vega: Poet of Love and Nature
Themes
- Petrarchan Conception of Love: When describing his beloved, Garcilaso always represents the Petrarchan ideal of feminine beauty: bright eyes, white hands, and a beautiful neck. This beauty is physical as well as spiritual.
- Idealized Nature: He portrays a refined and harmonious nature, reflecting a desire for rest and peace that corresponds to the literary topic of the pleasant place (locus amoenus).
- Mythology: He incorporates myths that combine love, despair, and serene, simple death.
Style
His style expresses feelings with ease and elegance. His language, without losing its musicality, often carries a tone of melancholy. He revisits the classical topics of carpe diem and the locus amoenus. Notable stylistic features include the use of:
- Metaphor
- Epithet
- Hyperbaton
- Personification
Garcilaso’s poetic career shows three stages: the influence of Hispanic lyric, the assimilation of Petrarchan and new art forms, and full maturity.
Major Works
He composed:
- Two elegies
- One epistle
- Four songs
- Ode to the Flower of Cnidus
- Thirty-eight sonnets
- Eight songs in Castilian verse
- Three eclogues (Eclogue I, Eclogue II, Eclogue III)
In the sonnets and songs, he used the Petrarchan style, combined with the rhetoric of love and the topics of lyric poetry. The elegies indicate the influence of the classics. The Eclogues are considered his most important works.
Trends in Second Renaissance Lyric Poetry
Currents in the lyric poetry of the second Renaissance:
Petrarchan Lyric
Poets following this trend, such as Fernando de Herrera, showed a preference for themes of love and used a more ornate and rhetorical language.
Horatian Lyric
This poetry cultivated moral issues. Formally, the preferred verse form of these authors (including Francisco de Aldana, Francisco de la Torre, and Fray Luis de León) is the lira, and their language is concise and clipped.
Religious Lyric
Religious literature is distinguished into ascetic and mystical literature.
Ascetic Literature
Asceticism aims for perfection through a life of struggle and sacrifice. Notable figures include Fray Luis de León, Fray Luis de Granada, and San Juan de Ávila. The most representative works are often written in prose.
Mystical Literature
Mysticism aspires to the union of the soul with God. This process typically involves three stages: the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive. Key figures include Saint John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz) and Saint Teresa of Jesus (Santa Teresa de Jesús).
Fray Luis de León: Serenity and Knowledge
Themes
- Desire for solitude and retreat from the bustle of urban life.
- Refuge in nature.
- The search for peace and knowledge as a way of approaching God. This theme responds to the topic of beatus ille (‘blessed is he who…’).
Style
His work consists mostly of odes, often using the verse form known as the lira. The main features of his style are:
- A sense of humor and irony.
- Extraordinary linguistic perfection.
- Use of the second person and rhetorical exclamations.
- Enumerations and enjambments.
- Recurring rhetorical questions.
- Continued use of symbols associated with nature.
- Use of epithet, personification, and metaphor.
Major Works
- Ode to the Retired Life
- Ode to Francisco Salinas
- Calm Night
- Ode to the Ascension
- Prophecy of the Tagus
San Juan de la Cruz: Mystical Union
Themes
His poems reflect his deep religious inspiration. He seeks to communicate his mystical experience.
Style
He resorts to symbols and allegories. A key element is the use of the image of the union between a man and a woman through marriage to symbolize the mystic union between the soul and God. His poetic compositions present numerous comparisons and metaphors.
Major Works
- Dark Night of the Soul (Noche oscura del alma)
- Spiritual Canticle (Cántico espiritual)
- Living Flame of Love (Llama de amor viva)