On the Matter of Imitation: Spanish Petrarchism, Boscán and Garcilaso

AbstractThis essay revisits and reassesses the first major renewal of Spain’s lyric tradition led by Juan Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega. While not pretending to discover or disclose new revelations, it regards anew the historiography of the reception by both these poets of Petrarchism, a cultural project that has by now entered the mythology of Spanish poetry. I reflect on earlier Spanish literary histories, rereading their texts alongside late twentieth-century theories of imitation and recent critical and theoretical studies of early modern poetic production to sketch a brief trajectory of the shifting contours of Spanish Renaissance poetry and poetics. Notes1 Louise Glück, ‘Formaggio’, in The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, ed. Michael Collier & Stanley Plumly (Hanover/London: Univ. Press of New England, 1999), 92.2 The move toward historical reckoning, as posited by ‘New Historicism’, has been compared to the cultural materialism in vogue in Britain. See Steven Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago/London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980). For a perspective of the two, see John Brannigan, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016).3 The binarism of these critical methods had its critics. Writing in 1981, Jerome McGann praised intrinsic studies as ‘the most influential work in literary criticism during the past fifty years’ (‘The Text, the Poem, and the Problem of Historical Method’, in Interpretation and Literary History, New Literary History, 12:2 [1981], 269–88 [p. 269]). See also Robert Foulke, ‘Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Criticism: A Valid Distinction?’, Modern Language Studies, 7:2 (1977), 3–10.4 George W. Pigman, III, ‘Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance’, Renaissance Quarterly, 33:1 (1980), 1–32; Thomas M. Greene, ‘Petrarch and the Humanist Hermeneutics’, in Italian Literature: Roots and Branches: Essays in Honor of Thomas Goddard, ed. Giose Rimanelli & Kenneth John Atchity (New Haven, CT: Yale U. P., 1976), 201–24.5 There are almost 2,000 entries of books, articles and reviews on imitation in Renaissance Quarterly alone. Important twentieth-century studies before Greene include the above-mentioned John Edwin Sandys, Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1905); Richard McKeon, ‘Literary Criticism and the Concept of Imitation in Antiquity’, Modern Philology, 34:1 (1936), 1–35; Nancy S. Struever, The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in Florentine Humanism (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1970); John M. Steadman, The Lamb and the Elephant: Ideal Imitation and the Context of Renaissance Allegory (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1974); Elaine Fantham, ‘Imitation and Evolution: The Discussion of Rhetorical Imitation in Cicero De oratore 2.87–97 and Some Related Problems of Ciceronian Theory’, Classical Philology, 73:1 (1978), 1–16; Elaine Fantham, ‘Imitation and Decline: Rhetorical Theory and Practice in the First Century after Christ’, Classical Philology, 73:2 (1978), 102–16; and Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1979).6 Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven, CT/London: Yale U. P., 1982), 8.7 Ronald A. Rebholz, review of The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry, Modern Philology, 82:4 (1985), 414–16 (p. 414).8 Greene, The Light in Troy, 41.9 Greene, The Light in Troy, 38–43.10 For his purposes, Kennedy defines Platonism as poetic furor, and Aristotelianism as the rhetorical art of writing. See William J. Kennedy, Petrarchism at Work: Contextual Economies in the Age of Shakespeare (Ithaca/London: Cornell U. P., 2016), 2.11 Greene, The Light in Troy, 2.12 Ernest H. Wilkins, ‘A General Survey of Renaissance Petrarchism’, Comparative Literature, 2:4 (1950), 327–42. Wilkins also mentions the Portuguese Petrarchists, mainly Francisco Sá de Miranda.13 Wilkins, ‘A General Survey of Renaissance Petrarchism’, 333.14 See William J. Kennedy, Authorizing Petrarch (Ithaca/London: Cornell U. P., 1995); and William J. Kennedy, The Site of Petrarchism: Early Modern National Sentiment in Italy, France, and England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. P., 2003).15 Although Kennedy does not cite Leonard Forster’s The Icy Fire, it is difficult to imagine that he would not have known the study, which, in contrast to his, posits Petrarchism as transcending national boundaries. See Leonard Forster, The Icy Fire: Five Studies in European Petrarchism (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1969).16 Kennedy, The Site of Petrarchism, 6.17 See, among other studies published on Petrarchism in the second half of the twentieth century: Joseph G. Fucilla, Estudios sobre el petrarquismo en España (Madrid: CSIC, 1960); Giovanni Caravaggi, Alle origini del petrarchismo in Spagna (Pisa: Istituto di Lingua e Letteratura Spagnola, 1973); María Pilar Manero Sorolla, Introducción al estudio del petrarquismo en España (Barcelona: PPU, 1987); Anne J. Cruz, Imitación y transformación: el petrarquismo en la poesía de Boscán y Garcilaso de la Vega (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1988); and María Pilar Manero Sorolla, Imágenes petrarquistas en la lírica española del Renacimiento (Barcelona: PPU, 1990).18 Ignacio Navarrete, Orphans of Petrarch: Poetry and Theory in the Spanish Renaissance (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1994).19 Gordon Braden, Petrarchan Love and the Continental Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale U. P., 1999), ix.20 Cited in Braden, Petrarchan Love, 86.21 Braden, Petrarchan Love, 85.22 Kennedy, The Site of Petrarchism, 4.23 Juan Boscán, ‘II. Libro II. A la duquesa de Soma’, in Juan Boscán, Poesía, ed. Pedro Ruiz Pérez (Madrid: Akal, 1999), 168. Subsequent references are to this edition and are given parenthetically within the main text.24 The Cancionero also included a poem by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza’s brother, Rodrigo de Mendoza, Marquis of Cenete, whose famed library in Valencia held three volumes. See Óscar Perea Rodríguez, Estudio biográfico sobre los poetas del ‘Cancionero general’ (Madrid: CSIC, 2007), 67.25 Albert Lloret, Printing Ausiàs March: Material Culture and Renaissance Poetics (Madrid: Centro para la Edición de los Clásicos Españoles, 2013), 11.26 According to Lloret, Boscan’s only poem in Catalan was based on one of March’s poems (Lloret, Printing Ausiàs March, 11, n. 14).27 Boscán would similarly dedicate his translation of Castiglione’s Il cortegiano to Gerónima Palova de Almogávar, his cousin’s wife, attributing to her the main reason for the translation. For noblewomen’s roles in book patronage, see Nieves Baranda Leturio, ‘Women’s Reading Habits: Book Dedications to Female Patrons in Early Modern Spain’, in Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World, ed. Anne J. Cruz & Rosilie Hernández (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 19–39.28 There is no evidence, however, that Boscán knew Greek; at the time, most everything written in Greek had been translated into Latin.29 See Angelo Mazzocco, ‘Petrarch: Founder of Renaissance Humanism?’, in Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism, ed. Angelo Mazzocco (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2006), 215–42 (pp. 237–38).30 Rafael Lapesa, ‘Originalidad de Garcilaso. Estudio preliminar’, in Garcilaso de la Vega, Obra poética y textos en prosa, ed., prólogo & notas de Bienvenido Morros, con un estudio preliminar de Rafael Lapesa (Barcelona: Crítica, 1995), ix–xxi, (p. ix). Further references to Garcilaso’s work are to this edition and will be given parenthetically within the main text.31 In France, Petrarchism appeared somewhat earlier, with Joachim du Bellay’s Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse published in 1549, clearing the path for the Pléiade. See Joachim du Bellay, ‘The Regrets’, with ‘The Antiquities of Rome’, Three Latin Elegies, and ‘The Defense and Enrichment of the French Language’, ed. & trans. Richard Helgerson (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).32 Braden, Petrarchan Love, 26.33 Stefano Jossa compares the numerous printed editions of Petrarch’s vernacular works with the abundant anthologies and canzonieri. See Stefano Jossa, ‘Bembo and Italian Petrarchism’, in The Cambridge Companion to Petrarch, ed. Albert Russell Ascoli & Unn Falkeid (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2015), 191–200 (p. 199).34 Garcilaso would also write admiringly of Boscán’s translation of the Cortegiano and idealize him in his ‘Égloga II'. See Anne J. Cruz, ‘Boscán, Garcilaso, and the Fortunes of Friendship’, Confluencia. Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura, 30:3 (2015), 34–50.35 Javier Lorenzo cites Jorge de Montemayor’s mention of a ‘Garci lasso enquadernado’ and his irritation at Boscán’s dismissal, in his Cancionero dated 1554. See Javier Lorenzo, ‘Nuevos casos, nuevas artes’: intertextualidad, autorrepresentaión e ideología en la obra de Juan Boscán (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 21. Several other studies have focused explicitly on Boscán: Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Antología de poetas líricos castellanos: desde la formación del idioma hasta nuestros días, 14 vols (Madrid: Librería de Perlado, Páez & Cª, 1890–1916), XIII (1908), Juan Boscán; Martín de Riquer, Juan Boscan y su cancionero barcelonés (Barcelona: Archivo Histórico, Casa del Arcediano, 1945); David Darst, Juan Boscán (Boston: Twayne, 1978); Antonio Armisen, Estudios sobre la lengua poética de Boscan. La edición de 1543 (Zaragoza: Univ. de Zaragoza, 1982); Alicia de Colombí-Monguió, ‘Boscán frente a Navagero: el nacimiento de la conciencia humanista en la poesía española’, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 40:1 (1992), 143–68; and Carlos Clavería’s edition of Juan Boscán, Obra completa (Madrid: Cátedra, 1999). They offer a mixed opinion of the poet; Menéndez y Pelayo is perhaps the most negative, while Lorenzo ardently defends Boscán as equal to Garcilaso.36 Garcilaso de la Vega, Obras con las anotaciones por el Maestro Francisco Sánchez Brocense (Madrid: Juan de la Cuesta, 1612), n.p. I have modernized the spelling.37 See Eugenia Fosalba Vela, ‘Implicaciones teóricas del alegorismo autobiográfico en la égloga III de Garcilaso. Estancia en Nápoles’, Studia Aurea, 3 (2009), 39–104.38 Gonzalo Argote de Molina, Discurso sobre la poesía castellana, in El conde Lucanor, compuesto por el excelentissimo principe don Juan Manuel, ed. Gonzalo de Argote y de Molina (Sevilla: Hernando Díaz, 1575), 92r–97v (fol. 97r). See also Navarrete, Orphans of Petrarch, 127–29.39 ‘Mientes, mientes, Herrerilla, maligno, o pollino, o gramatico mezquino, no diuino’ (cited in Antonio Alatorre, ‘Garcilaso, Herrera, Prete Jacopín y don Tomás Tamayo de Vargas’, MLN, 78:2, Spanish Issue [1963], 126–52 [p. 151]).40 A professor of Romance languages at Hobart College, Robert Mills Beach was mainly concerned with Herrera’s lack of knowledge of Greek, but also comments on Herrera’s verbiage in his apparent need to aggrandize himself at Garcilaso’s expense. See Robert Mills Beach, Was Fernando de Herrera a Greek Scholar? (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1908), 19 & 38. Although María Rosa Lida de Malkiel roundly attacks Beach for his ‘soez invectiva’, Prete Jacopín also chides Herrera for imitating Scaliger: ‘cuando veo la libertad con que reprehendéis a Garcilaso y a otros autores creo si duda que es por ser mona de aquellos libros Crítico e Hypercrítico del doctísimo y agudo Julio Scaliger que tan justamente merece estos nombres mas a otra feria vais que más fama cobreis’ (Contestación de Prete Jacopín a las Anotaciones de Herrera a Garcilaso, Ms. 14 [Madrid: Real Academia Española, 2013], 5v; available at (accessed 29 December 2022). For Lida de Malkiel, see ‘La tradición clásica en España’, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 5:2 (1951), 183–223 (p. 218).41 Prete Jacopín calls attention to Herrera’s ignorance in his Observación XLVI: ‘sabéis poner por obra en muchos caracteres griegos que e visto en vuestras obras; porque si bien lo miráis, Señor Herrera, hazer letras que no se conocen, pintar es, i no escribir’; cited in Silvia-Alexandra Stefan, ‘ “Mirad enhoramala lo que decís”: crítica, censura y deslegitimación en las Observaciones del licenciado Prete Jacopín’, Hipogrifo. Revista de Literatura y Cultura del Siglo de Oro, 9:2 (2021), 999–1021, available at (accessed 3 January 2023). See Andreina Bianchini, ‘Herrera and Prete Jacopín: The Consequences of the Controversy’, Hispanic Review, 46:2 (1978), 221–34. The pseudonymous author has been identified as the diplomat and art patron, Juan Fernández de Velasco, Constable of Castille and Duke of Frías. See Juan Montero, ‘Don Juan Fernández de Velasco contra Fernando de Herrera: de nuevo sobre la identidad de Prete Jacopín’, in Siglos dorados. Homenaje a Agustín Redondo, coord. Pierre Civil, 2 vols (Madrid: Castalia, 2004), II, 997–1008 (available at [accessed 3 January 2023]).42 Torres considers this ‘intermediary self-consciousness’ a defining factor in Renaissance humanism. See Isabel Torres, Love Poetry in the Spanish Golden Age: Eros, Eris and Empire (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2013), 60–61.43 Fernando de Herrera, ‘Comentarios de Fernando de Herrera, 1580’, in Garcilaso de la Vega y sus comentaristas, ed., intro., notas, cronología & bibliografía por Antonio Gallego Morell (Granada: Univ. de Granada, 1966), 279–580 (p. 290).44 For a reading that stresses Herrera’s concept of imitatio as inherently violent and gendered male, against Italian sources as feminized, see Felipe Valencia, The Melancholy Void: Lyric and Masculinity in the Age of Góngora (Lincoln, NE: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2021).45 Herrera, ‘Comentarios de Fernando de Herrera, 1580’, 289.46 Herrera, ‘Comentarios de Fernando de Herrera, 1580’, 290–91.47 See Juan Montero, La controversia sobre las ‘Anotaciones’ herrerianas (Sevilla: Ayuntamiento de Sevilla, 1987); and Juan Montero, ‘Las Anotaciones de Herrera a Garcilaso como texto polémico: aspectos materiales, editoriales y autoriales’, Calíope. Journal of the Society of Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry, 26:1 (2021), 1–18.48 Herrera, ‘Comentarios de Fernando de Herrera, 1580’, 281.49 Torres, Love Poetry in the Spanish Golden Age, 68–70. For a full analysis of Herrera’s poems, see Torres’ Chapter 3, ‘Fernando de Herrera (1534–1597); “Righting” the Middle – Centres, Circles and Algunas Obras (1582)’, 60–94. For Herrera’s life in Seville, see Ignacio García Aguilar, Fernando de Herrera: vida y literatura en la Sevilla quinientista (1534–1597) (Huelva: Univ. de Huelva, 2022).50 See Navarrete, Orphans of Petrarch, 137–51. See also Torres, Love Poetry in the Spanish Golden Age, 63–65.51 Navarrete, Orphans of Petrarch, 169.52 Navarrete, Orphans of Petrarch, 138–39.53 Joseph Pérez, Isabel y Fernando, los Reyes Católicos, trad. Fernando Santos Fontela (Madrid: Nerea, 1988), 239.54 Ruth Pike, ‘Seville in the Sixteenth Century’, Hispanic American Historical Review 41:1 (1961), 1–30.55 Henri Bonneville, ‘Sur la poésie à Séville au Siècle d’Or’, Bulletin Hispanique, 66:3–4 (1964), 311–48.56 See Anne J. Cruz & Elias L. Rivers, ‘Three Literary Manifestos of Early Modern Spain: Juan Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega’, PMLA, 126:1 (2011), 233–42.57 Richard Helgerson, A Sonnet from Carthage: Garcilaso de la Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), x.58 ‘Canción I, “Libro Segundo” ’, in Las obras de Juan Boscán; repartidas en tres libros, ed. William I. Knapp (Madrid: Librería M. Murillo, 1875), 236.59 See José María Rodríguez García, ‘Epos delendum est: The Subject of Carthage in Garcilaso’s “A Boscán desde la Goleta” ’, Hispanic Review, 66:2 (1998), 151–70 (pp. 154–55).60 Morros gives as these verses’ sources the anonymous condolence poem, Consolatio ad Liviam and, more specifically, Fracastoro (Obra poética y textos en prosa, ed. Morros, 96–97). See also Antonio Gargano, ‘Locating Garcilaso de la Vega: Between Petrarchism and Vernacular Classicism’, in The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Early Modern Spanish Literature and Culture, ed. Rodrigo Cacho Casal & Caroline Egan (New York: Routledge, 2022), 158–70.61 See Helgerson, A Sonnet from Carthage, 108.62 For poets who were also soldiers, see Leah Middlebrook’s fine analysis of Hernando de Acuña and Francisco de Figueroa, in her Imperial Lyric: New Poetry and New Subjects in Early Modern Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State U. P., 2009).63 Guido Mazzoni, On Modern Poetry, trans. Zakiya Hanafi (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard U. P., 2022 [1st Italian ed. 2005]), 103–04. For the Italian autobiografismo trascendentale as autobiographical experience in Petrarch, see Gianfranco Contini, Varianti e altra linguistica: una raccolta di saggi (1938–1968) (Torino: Einaudi, 1970), 78.64 Mazzoni, On Modern Poetry, trans. Hanafi, 103.65 Elias Rivers earlier elucidated a similar problematic of nature converted into art through poetic mediation. See his ‘The Pastoral Paradox of Natural Art’, MLN, 77:2 (1962), 130–44.66 For Garcilaso’s poetry in Naples, see Eugenia Fosalba, Pulchra Parthenope. Hacia la faceta napolitana de la poesía de Garcilaso (Madrid: Iberoamericana/Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 2019).67 Antonio Gargano, ‘La égloga en Nápoles entre Sannazaro y Garcilaso’, in La égloga. VI Encuentro Internacional sobre Poesía del Siglo de Oro, Universidades de Sevilla y Córdoba, 20–23 de noviembre de 2000, organizado por el Grupo de Investigación PASO, ed. Begoña López Bueno (Sevilla: Univ. de Sevilla, 2002), 57–77 (pp. 66–67).68 Isabel Torres discusses early inclinations toward ‘sentimental biography’ in ‘Neo-Parkerism: An Approach to Reading Garcilaso de la Vega, Eclogue 1’, in Golden-Age Essays in Commemoration of A. A. Parker, ed. Terence O’Reilly & Jeremy Robbins, BSS, LXXXV:6 (2008), 93–105 (pp. 94–95).69 Elias L. Rivers, ‘La paradoja pastoral del arte natural’, in La poesía de Garcilaso: ensayos críticos, ed. Elias L. Rivers (Barcelona: Ariel, 1981), 287–308 (p. 288).70 Torres, Love Poetry in the Spanish Golden Age, 43–59.71 Garcilaso’s pastoral practice is thus inserted in the shifting processes of imitative strategies from Renaissance to Baroque pastoral poems. See Anne Holloway, ‘ “Es más difícil la parte que responde”: The Challenge of Baroque Pastoral’, in her The Potency of Pastoral in the Hispanic Baroque (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2017), 1–29.72 Mary E. Barnard notes how the tapestries in ‘Égloga III’ exemplify the play of presence and absence; such a play can be found as well in 'Égloga I’. See her ‘Correcting the Classics: Absence and Presence in Garcilaso’s Third Eclogue’, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 26:1 (1992), 3–20.73 See Roland Béhar, ‘Galatea, o la idea de la belleza garcilasiana’, Bulletin Hispanique, 119:2 (2017), 591–620.74 For an interpretation that liberates Garcilaso from his indebtedness to one historically specific ‘María’, see José María Rodríguez García, ‘The Deferral of Praise in Garcilaso’s Third Eclogue’, Romance Notes, 41:1 (2000), 15–23.75 Mary E. Barnard, ‘Garcilaso’s Poetics of Subversion and the Orpheus Tapestry’, PMLA, 201:3 (1987), 316–25 (p. 323).76 Navarrete, Orphans of Petrarch, 124.77 Morros cites as sources Virgil and particularly Petrarch, CCCII, 1–8 (‘Levommi il mio penser in parte ov’era / quella ch’io cerco e non ritrovo in terra, / ivi, fra lor che ‘l terzo cerchio serra, / la rividi più bella e meno altera. / […] / Per man me prese’); and Sannazaro’s Arcadia, V, 9–20 and 14–16 (‘E co’ vestige santi / calchi le stelle errant […] / Altri monti, altri piani, / altri boschetti e rivi / vedi nel cielo’) (Obra poética y textos en prosa, ed. Morros, 139, n. 407).* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.