![]() | A Sonnet from Carthage: Garcilaso de la Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe Subjects: Vega Garcilaso de la 1503–1536 -- Criticism and interpretation; Spanish poetry -- Classical period 1500–1700 -- History and criticism; European poetry -- Renaissance 1450–1600 -- History and criticism; In 1492 the Spanish humanist Antonio de Nebrija proclaimed that "language has always been the companion of empire." Taking as his touchstone a wonderfully suggestive sonnet that Garcilaso de la Vega wrote in 1535 from the neighborhood of ruined Carthage in North Africa, Richard Helgerson examines how the companionship of language and empire played itself out more generally in the "new poetry" of sixteenth-century Europe. Along with his friend Juan Boscán, Garcilaso was one of the great pioneers of that poetry, radically reforming Spanish verse in imitation of modern Italian and ancient Roman models. As the century progressed, similar projects were undertaken in France by Ronsard and du Bellay, in Portugal by Camões, and in England by Sidney and Spenser. And wherever the new poetry emerged, it was prompted by a sense that imperial ambition--the quest to be in the present what Rome had been in the past--required a vernacular poetry comparable to the poetry of Rome. Richard Helgerson is Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of many books, including Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England, winner of both the British Council Prize in the Humanities and the James Russell Lowell Prize of the Modern Language Association. His translation and edition of Joachim du Bellay is also published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. |
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