Paradigms of National Identity in Francisco de Quevedo’s Poetry: Los (Des)Engaños de la Grandeza

Abstract

Francisco de Quevedo’s vast poetic corpus has most often been examined for its moral, amorous, or satirical aspects, among others. One key aspect of his lyrical works which has to some degree remained less studied is Quevedo’s stance on Spanish national identity. Existing scholarship on this topic often falls within the larger category of scholarship on satirical or political poetic works or on Quevedo’s many prose writings.1 The purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which Quevedo explores Spanish national identity and to arrive at a conclusion as to what he had considered paradigmatic about being Spanish. While an exhaustive account of Quevedo’s beliefs regarding Spanish identity as seen is his poetry would be impossible for this study, several select poems of varying lengths demonstrate these beliefs in depth. A number of sonnets, many of which are encomiastic in nature and most of which come from the posthumously published El Parnaso espanol (1648) contain what can best be described as a generally traditionalist (and, in today’s parlance, stereotyped) stance on hispanidad. At the same time, a longer poetic work, the Epistola satirica y censoria contra las costumbres presentes de los castellanos, evinces a far more critical and disenchanted outlook on Spanish identity while adding an element of wistful nostalgia for an unspecified past. What will emerge from this study is that Quevedo’s portrayal of national identity cannot be reduced to a single paradigm and, as a result, is nuanced as it is often contradictory.2 Quevedo’s beliefs about Spanish identity are informed by a sense of desengano pervasive in much of his work (including prose as well) which is rigidly hierarchical as it is reactionary.