Spanish Renaissance Lyric Poetry: Schools and Authors

Posted on Mar 10, 2025 in Latin

Lyric Poetry in the Second Spanish Renaissance

Petrarchan Lyric

This trend continued to develop the poetic forms that Boscán introduced into Spanish literature, and Garcilaso brought to perfection. Poets who followed this trend showed a preference for themes of love and a more ornate and rhetorical language. Fernando de Herrera changed poetry both in its theoretical concepts and in the search for a renewed language. His Annotations on the poetry of Garcilaso involve an examination of the poetry of Toledo as a poet and a classical theoretical manifesto of the formal renewal of his generation.

Horatian Lyric (Lyric Horaciana)

In the ideological environment that was felt during the reign of Philip II, some authors preferred poetry that cultivated moral issues. Formally, the favorite verse of these authors is the lira (lyre), and their language is terse and clipped. Authors such as Fray Luis de León and Francisco de la Torre belong to the Spanish or Salamanca school.

Religious Lyric

Some changes were introduced to encourage readers’ devotion and moral teachings. Symbols were used to represent the path of the soul to God. Within religious literature, a distinction is made between ascetic and mystical literature, which are two parts of theology that say it is possible to achieve the union of the human soul with God before death.

  • Ascetic: Seeks to improve people through a lifetime of effort and sacrifice. Fray Luis de León, San Juan de la Cruz.

The person goes a way to contemplate God.

  • Mystical: Aims to unite the soul with God, a process that takes place in three stages:
    • Purgative: The soul is stripped of earthly ties.
    • Illuminative: Peace is provided by the presence of God.
    • Unitive: The soul is united with God.
  • St. Teresa of Jesus

Fray Luis de León

The head of ascetic lyric poetry is Fray Luis de León.

Recurring Themes

Recurring themes in his work include the desire for solitude and retreat from the bustle of city life, taking refuge in nature, and the pursuit of peace and knowledge as an approach to God. This issue responds to the theme of Beatus ille, meaning “happy is he,” and was used as an expression of a need to return to country life.

Style

Fray Luis’s poetry is made up mostly of odes, and the verse form used is the lira.

The main features of Fray Luis’s poetic style are:

  • A sense of humor and irony.
  • An extraordinary linguistic perfection based on the simplicity and sobriety of Castilian.
  • The use of the second person and rhetorical exclamations with the desire to involve readers in the content.
  • A preference for certain figures of speech: enumerations, questions, and enjambments, which give a rapid pace commensurate with expressive intensity.
  • To express his emotions, Fray Luis makes continued use of symbols associated with nature: the sea, wind, night, the air, mountains.
  • The epithet, metaphor, and personification are figures of meaning that reveal a density of meaning hidden behind the simple style of his odes.

Works

  • “Ode to the Retired Life”
  • “Ode to Francisco Salinas”
  • “Serene Night”
  • “Ode to the Ascension”
  • “Prophecy of the Tagus”