The ambition of melancholy: the aesthetics of heroism in the lyric poetry of Juan Boscán and Fernando de Herrera

With the use of Todorov’s theory of narrative progression, I explore how Boscán’s sonnet corpus facilitates a journeying motif that forges a new path for Spanish poetics that is both emulative of and distinct from the original Petrarchan pathway. In Boscán’s most ambitious piece, his mythological fable on Hero and Leander, I explore how his engagement with ancient models through a diglossic framework leads to a successful negotiation of topics of a morally challenging nature for the Renaissance reader.

Moving towards the end of the century, I re-examine Fernando de Herrera’s role in the elevation of Spanish letters in a moment of perceived complacency and creative stasis, both drawing on the model of Garcilaso de la Vega but also reformulating a previous lyric subjectivity which incorporates a melancholic consciousness of the weaknesses of imperialism.