Boscán and the Aesthetics of the Hendecasyllabic Line

The impact of Castiglione's book on Spanish poetic theory, and the heightened sense of belatedness and displacedness essential for a truly Renaissance Petrarchism, all become manifest only in Boscán's preface, "A la Duquesa de Soma," published in the volume Las obras de Boscán y algvnas de Garcilasso de la Vega repartidas en quatro libros (1543); there he proclaims that the adoption of Italian forms will lead to the transfer of learning to Spain, yet worries about whether the latter can truly be accomplished. In the first chapter we saw Nebrija and Encina, at the end of the fifteenth century, attempting to introduce reforms that would allow Spain, now that it had (so they thought) attained its political and military apogee, to make up for its cultural backwardness. Similarly, Juan de Valdés praised Petrarch and Boccaccio and lamented that writers in Castilian had failed to take similar care in developing their language, so that they could perform a similar role as stylistic models (44). All three writers reveal a growing sense of the inadequacy of Spanish literature, particularly in comparison with Italian, expressed through the trope of the superiority of Petrarch and Boccaccio. The Italy to which they refer, therefore, draws on the greatness of its fourteenth-century writers. Implicit in their expressions of national inferiority is a sense of belatedness, of the need to measure up to the great achievements of the past; and they offer advice for improving Spanish letters. Unlike his predecessors, however, Boscán is ready to take radical steps to reform Spanish poetry: he transforms the trope about the superiority of Petrarch into a plan, for to him it is only by adopting the hendecasyllable and other Italian forms and by breaking with the traditional genres that the Spanish will ever be able to catch up with the Italians. But the arguments are presented indirectly, for the preface is written in a courtly discursive mode that identifies the new

poetry with Charles V's transnational empire, and weaves a serious discussion of aesthetic principles and a theory of literary history with courtly rhetoric where the topics of aristocratic superiority predominate.

The theme of social superiority begins in the opening lines of the preface: Boscán, in offering his book to the duchess, claims for it the approbation of Garcilaso, whose own verses constitute the fourth section of the volume, and of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, who used to take pleasure in Boscán's coplas , or poems in the traditional Castilian genres, which take up book 1. With this double sanction, Boscán asserts for his poetry company of the highest caliber that will only be enhanced with the eventual approval of the duchess herself.^[15] Their approval is contrasted to the complaints of Boscán's detractors, characterized as "hombres que me cansaron" (men who bored me, 87):

Los unos se quexavan que en las trobas d'esta arte los consonantes no andavan tan descubiertos ni sonavan tanto como en las castellanas. Otros dezían que este verso no sabían si era verso o si era prosa. Otros argüían diziendo que esto principalmente havía de ser para mugeres y que ellas no curavan de cosas de sustancia sino del son de las palabras y de la dulçura del consonante.
(87–88)

Some complained that in poems of this type the rhyme was not as discernible as in the Castilian ones. Others said that they could not tell if this was verse or prose. Others argued that this was primarily for women who do not care for matters of substance, but only for the sound of the words and the sweetness of the rhymes.

The final accusation recalls the notion that literature is not a suitable occupation for gentlemen; through this statement of objections, Boscán would seem to prepare readers for a dialectical refutation that will in turn advance his thesis. Yet instead he chooses, as Bianchini put it, "to elude their criticism with a rhetorical strategy aimed at belittling their accusations" ("A Note on Boscán," 2), essentially by impugning their nobility. This is already implicit in the fact that they, unlike Garcilaso, do not appreciate the new poetry; it becomes explicit in their attitude to women, reminiscent of Pallavicino's in the Cortegiano . By alluding to their misogyny, Boscán performs the same maneuver as in the preface to his translation, putting his critics

outside the pale of those worthy of a response. He also associates their literary taste with their supposedly plebeian background, by a play on words: those who want poetry full of rhyme, he says, can look in that cancionero "que acordó de llamarse general para que todos ellos bivan y descansen con él generalmente" (which is by agreement called general so that they can all in general live and take pleasure there, 88).

His opponents have one more complaint, however: that Boscán has adopted Italian forms only in the pursuit of novelty. To deflect this charge, Boscán separates himself from the socially lower class of literate servants, making it clear that writing is for him a pastime, "quiero que sepan que ni yo jamás he hecho professión de escrivir esto ni otra cosa" (I wish them to know that I have never made a profession of writing, neither this nor anything else, 88). He then tells the story of his meeting Andrea Navagero in Granada, of their subsequent discussion about literary matters, and of the Italian asking and even begging him to try to write sonnets in Castilian. Shortly thereafter, on the long trip home, Boscán took up Navagero's suggestion, and although it seemed difficult at first because of the many differences between these forms and the Spanish ones, he eventually found it easier. Even then he would not have continued to compose these poems but for the influence of Garcilaso's judgment, "el qual no solamente en mi opinión, mas en la de todo el mundo, ha sido tenido por regla cierta" (which not only in my opinion, but in everyone's, has been regarded as a sure arbiter, 89).^[16] He not only approved of Boscán's efforts and encouraged him to continue, but served as a model in following the same path and writing sonnets himself. Here Boscán's strategy again resembles that in the Cortegiano preface, with Garcilaso replacing Doña Gerónima and in turn being replaced by Navagero, yet the purpose is the same: to assert an approving, aristocratic readership for his work that counteracts the negative reaction of his detractors. The locus of the meeting is also important, because it links the new forms, indirectly, to the emperor himself: Boscán and Navagero were in Granada as part of the court, attending the festivities surrounding Charles's wedding (see Menéndez y Pelayo, 67–72; Fernández Alvarez, 62–65), and this information in turn dates Boscán's first attempts at the new forms back to 1526. The anecdote thus serves the same function as the short narratives used by the speakers in Castiglione's book,

advancing a position through indirect association rather than through direct argument.

Boscán's assertions of nobility culminate in the claims he makes for the genres themselves. The Italian verse-forms are inherently superior—a point to which we shall return—but they can also claim a better pedigree than the Spanish. This assertion strikes the modern reader as somewhat anticlimactic; after the earlier assertion of aesthetic superiority, it seems odd that Boscán would devote so much attention to the question of genealogy. Here too, however, it is a matter of courtly rhetoric at work, for in a sixteenth-century context lineage is very important indeed. While the origin of the Castilian forms, like that of suspect New Christians, is unknown, the Italian verse forms can be traced back to Petrarch, before that to Dante, and before him to the Provençal poets, whose works, because of the passage of time, have been largely forgotten even though they were also the source of the Catalan poets, including Ausías March. One can even go farther back than the Provençals and find that the Romans used the same hendecasyllables (insomuch as the difference in languages can allow one to speak of the same meter), and that they in turn took it from the Greeks. Thus the genealogy asserts for the hendecasyllable an ancestry in Greco-Roman antiquity not unlike that of knights in romances, while the origin of the Castilian forms, like that of people hiding their Jewish ancestry, cannot be traced.^[17] Paradoxically, only the Italian, by being foreign, can be ascertained to be truly noble, fully acceptable. Moreover, in his history of its origins Boscán includes not only the necessary Italian and classical antecedents, but the Provençal ones as well, which permits a digression in praise of Boscán's fellow Catalan poets and particularly Ausías March. In contrast, all medieval Castilian poetry, a well-established canon that includes works by noblemen such as Santillana and Manrique, is ignored, and by implication marginalized with the Cancionero general into the category of works fit only for plebeians.

The repeated assertions of nobility for the new genres and their practitioners constitute one of the principal recurrent themes in Boscán's preface. In the context of Castiglione's book, it is understandable, for there too aristocratic origins had been favored, if only for the sake of a better first impression. The point becomes even more important in the Spanish context because Boscán, from the time of

the Cortegiano translation, has been trying to impose a new and competing notion of just what constitutes acceptable courtly behavior; thus his recourse to authorities like the duchess, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Navagero, and above all Garcilaso himself, cited here, as in Valdés, as an authority on courtiership. Even more pointedly than in the translation, Boscán here attempts to distinguish between the general class of the merely literate (that is, the detractors) and those who can claim to belong to the inner circle of imperial courtiers.^[18] Yet Boscán also has serious aesthetic reasons for preferring the new mode, which are again in line with the aesthetic principles in Castiglione. From the very beginning of the preface, beneath an overlay of courtly and religious associations, Boscán asserts the inherent superiority of the new forms: "Este segundo libro terná otras cosas hechas al modo italiano. . . . La manera d'éstas es más grave y de más artificio y (si yo no me engaño) mucho mejor que la de las otras" (This second book will contain other things in the Italian mode. . . . Their manner is graver and of greater artifice and [if I am not mistaken] much better than that of the others, 87). This is in fact his thesis, but it is tempered by the indirect presentation and qualifications. Much of the preface is taken up with explicating the precise nature of the Italian forms' superiority, a theme to which he returns again and again; but while this theme forms the aesthetic core of his argument, he presents it in bits and pieces, never allowing it to overwhelm the courtly, disinterested tenor of his presentation.

The initial complaint of the detractors, that the new poetry is lacking in rhyme and is generally indistinguishable from prose, is never refuted:

¿Quién ha de responder a hombres que no se mueven sino al son de los consonantes? ¿Y quién se ha de poner en pláticas con gente que no sabe qué cosa es verso, sino aquél que calçado y vestido con el consonante os entra de un golpe por el un oído y os sale por el otro? Pues a los otros que dizen que estas cosas no siendo sino para mugeres no han de ser muy fundadas, ¿quién ha de gastar tiempo en respondelles? Tengo yo a las mugeres por tan sustanciales . . . (88)

Who can answer those men who are moved only by the sound of rhyme? And who can discuss things with people who don't know what a verse is, save that which shod and dressed in rhyme enters

you with a blow through one ear and leaves you through the other? And as to those others who say that as these are women's things, they do not need a good foundation: Who will waste time in answering them? I hold women to be so substantial . . .

At first Boscán's response here—mostly limited, as Terracini noted (Lingua come problema , 155), to a restatement of the defensa de mujeres —seems inadequate. In fact, it is a courtly move that allows Boscán to dismiss his detractors while appropriating their criticisms to show that the new poetry is substantially in accord with the precepts in Castiglione and Valdés: that writing should be like speech and poetry, like prose. Boscán uses the detractors' complaints to explore, in a more specific way than in the translation, the ways in which Castiglione's courtly principles can transform the Spanish lyric. In comparison to the traditional genres, the hendecasyllable does seem less melopoeic; although there are many stylistic and thematic similarities, in medieval Spanish poetry, rooted in the oral tradition, the reader—and even more the listener—is borne along by the regular rhythms and patterns of sound. These are the consonantes that the detractors found wanting; the word means rhyme, but with etymological overtones of euphony as well. Italian-style poetry would strike someone familiar only with the traditional Spanish forms as totally lacking in sound patterns, nearly prose. Of course, this is not true; Italian poetry is in fact characterized by elaborate sound patterns, such as the complicated rhyme schemes of the sonnet, canzone , and sestina , as well as the subtle stress patterns of the hendecasyllable.^[19] But as these are not the kind of pattern with which the Spaniard is familiar, they are not recognized, and the long line obscures in particular the presence of rhyme (see Lázaro Carreter, "Poética"). Just as Castiglione used Pallavicino, so too Boscán uses his critics to make a point that must be accommodated, embedding it in an indirect, dialogic discourse.

Similarly, the detractors' further complaint, that Boscán is pursuing novelties, has a serious dimension, for it amounts to a charge of affectation, the gravest aesthetic fault. As already noted, Boscán attempts to avoid the issue by registering his status as an amateur writer, with no ambitions. Yet he acknowledges a contradiction between these words and the publication of his poetry, one that he can resolve only by an assertion of sprezzatura:

Pues si . . . he querido ser el primero que ha juntado la lengua castellana con el modo de escrivir italiano . . . nunca tuve fin a escrivir, sino a andarme descansando con mi spíritu . . . [y] nunca pensé que inventava ni hazía cosa que huviesse de quedar en el mundo, sino que entré en ello descuydadamente como en cosa que iva tan poco en hazella, que no havía para qué dexalla de hazer haviéndola gana. (89)

For even if . . . I have wanted to be the first to join the Castilian language with the Italian way of writing . . . I never had any purpose for writing, other than to rest with my spirit . . . [and] I never thought I was inventing or doing something that would remain in the world, so I entered upon it carelessly as with an occupation so insignificant that there was no reason for not doing it if I so desired.

The key word here is descuydadamente , reminiscent of descuido in the Cortegiano translation. There is no reason for him not to have tried his hand at the new forms because, unlike those for whom writing is a profession, he sought no benefit from it. Thus, echoing the very language that he had earlier used to render Castiglione's introduction of the concept of sprezzatura , he underlines his poetry's ludic function as a pastime so inconsequential that there could be no stricture of affectation held against it. But just as he had earlier appropriated the detractors' argument, so too here this defense allows him indirectly to incorporate the charge he is refuting, modestly minimizing his actions even as he lays a claim to being the first to practice the Italian forms in Castilian, one he substantiates with that early terminus a quo for his efforts implicit in the meeting with Navagero.

Sprezzatura/descuido is an ambiguous concept, part aesthetic principle, part social precept, and one better illustrated through example than defined through precepts. Thus this passage is also important because it leads into the story of the meeting with Navagero, which has entered Spanish literary history as a description of the origins of Petrarchism in Spain.^[20] While it is possible that the conversation took place as Boscán described it, the story must be read in the context of the sprezzatura alluded to in the preceding passage. Consequently, Boscán presents himself being begged by Navagero to try the new forms, taking them up to pass the time on the journey,

quickly mastering the requirements, but persevering only at Garcilaso's insistence. At the same time, the account subtly undermines the notion of poetry as the product of ocio in its paradoxical sense of free time that can be devoted to poetic work. Instead Boscán presents his poems as a pastime, something to be done during a journey when his mind was not fully occupied, which explains why they may strike readers as lacking in poetic interest. As with the charge that the new poetry is prosaic, Boscán does not so much refute the accusation of novelty as appropriate it, countering the implication of affectation with the virtues of sprezzatura and his ultimate success exemplified through Garcilaso's work. The assertion of sprezzatura is all the more evident because the poetry in book 2 shows Boscán to be much too careful and self-conscious a poet for writing verse to have been just a diversion.

Having dealt with the accusations against him, Boscán is finally free to take up the virtues of the new genres:

En él vemos dondequiera que se nos muestra una disposición muy capaz para recibir qualquier materia: o grave o sotil o dificultosa o fácil, y assimismo para ayuntarse con qualquier estilo de los que hallamos entre los autores antiguos aprovados. (90)

We see that it shows itself everywhere capable of receiving any subject matter, whether grave or subtle, difficult or simple, which can thus be joined to any style that can be found among the approved ancient authors.

Here Boscán finally explicates the assertion of superiority first made at the beginning of the dialogue, when he contended that the new poetry was "mucho mejor." Its superiority lies in its capacity for adornment, its susceptibility to variety, and its adaptability to any subject matter and any stylistic register. This virtue is particularly important in terms of Castiglione's ideals of decorum and of mediocrità , achieved through the balance of stylistic levels. Traditional poetry, drummed in one ear and out the other, limited the appreciation of these virtues; freed from the tyranny of sound and the preoccupation with prosodic "galas" and "licencias," the new poetry places the emphasis instead on stylistic features such as metaphor and wit, allowing the poet to adapt his writing to any mood or style.

As we have seen, Boscán's aesthetic arguments are not entirely

distinguishable from his courtly rhetoric. Both are based on principles derived from Castiglione, and, like sprezzatura itself, they straddle the line between aesthetics and social convention. Boscán's mode of argumentation, too, is like Castiglione's in incorporating the critics' voices and ideas even as the proponents are themselves dismissed, and in teaching by example rather than by precept. In the course of the preface, Boscán considers the effect of his poetry on two audiences, a courtly and appreciative one, symbolized by Garcilaso and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, and the "tiresome men." Yet Boscán is also conscious of another audience: posterity. To him, the Italian forms are not only worthy of adoption, but indeed should supersede all the vernacular forms; then some day the Castilian poets may actually surpass the Italians in fame. Once again the grounds for this implicit theory of literary history are carefully prepared; from the very beginning of the preface, there is a fixation on the theme of transition.

Indeed this preoccupation arises from the very location of the text. Boscán's epistle is generically a dedicatory preface, analogous to the earlier one dedicating the Castiglione translation to Doña Gerónima. Yet instead of being conventionally placed at the beginning of the volume of his and Garcilaso's verses, it is strategically shifted to a position between the first and second books. Boscán displaces it in order to mark the transition from what he calls his early verses in Castilian genres to works written in hendecasyllabic lines, particularly book 2, a macrotextual collection of sonnets and canciones . The insertion of a dedicatory epistle in this odd location underlines the break between the first and the rest of the books; at the same time, it thematizes its transitional function, explaining the need for the change in poetic genres.^[21] As such it marks the passage from one book to another, and symbolizes the national movement from the old genres to the new and the ensuing transfer of learning from Italy to Spain. In the opening lines of the preface, Boscán asserts a transitional role for his Italianate poetic production, bracketing it between, on the one hand, the final book, containing the works of Garcilaso, "éste . . . que no cansará a nadie, mas aún dará muy gran alivio al cansancio de los otros" (he . . . who will tire out no one, but rather grant relief from the exhaustion of others), and, on the other hand, the poetry in the first book, which is in Castilian forms:

En el primero avrá vuestra señoría visto essas coplas (quiero dezillo assí) hechas a la castellana. Solía holgarse con ellas un hombre muy avisado y a quien vuestra señoría deve de conocer muy bien, que es don Diego de Mendoça. Mas paréceme que se holgava con ellas como con niños, y assí las llamava las redondillas. (87)

In the first your ladyship would have seen those ditties (I want to call them that) done in the Castilian style. A very discreet man your ladyship must know well, namely, Don Diego [Hurtado] de Mendoza, used to enjoy them. But it seems he enjoyed them as one enjoys children, and so he called them quatrains/little round ones.

The pun in the final word emphasizes the infantile nature of the early poems, while, with the double sanction of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and Garcilaso, Boscán asserts for his poetry company of the highest caliber. Yet although the Castilian poetry was pleasing to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, and thus is worthy of publication, this was only as a trifle, a childish accomplishment to be outgrown and put behind him. The passage echoes St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians: "Cuando yo era niño, hablaba como niño, sentía como niño, pensaba como niño. Mas cuando fuí ya hecho hombre, dí de mano a las cosas de niño" (When I was a child, I spoke as a child, felt as a child, thought as a child; but when I became a man, I left behind childish things, 13:11). By equating his conversion, from one type of poetry to another, to St. Paul's, Boscán makes the argument rhetorically stronger.

The process of conversion is itself narrated in personal terms; that essentially is what the Navagero story is about. Yet from the very opening lines Boscán also extends the conversion to a collective level by justifying its value in terms of Garcilaso's poetry. This is an argument to which he returns near the end of the preface, where he predicts the effects of the widespread adoption of the hendecasyllable:

Porque ya los buenos ingenios de Castilla, que van fuera de la vulgar cuenta, le aman y le siguen y se exercitan en él tanto, que si los tiempos con sus desasossiegos no lo estorvan, podrá ser que antes de mucho se duelan los italianos de ver lo bueno de su poesía transferido en España. Pero aún está lexos, y no es bien que nos fundemos en estas esperanças hasta vellas más çerca. (91)

For already the best minds of Castile, whom the vulgar do not take into account, love it and follow it and so exert themselves that, if time with its disappointments does not intervene, it may be that before long the Italians will complain about seeing the best of their poetry transferred to Spain. But this is still far away, and it is best not to ground ourselves in such hopes until we see them up close.

The "buenos ingenios" include above all Garcilaso, who joins BoscCH:225>n in the project of effectuating the translatio , and bringing the seat of poetic glory from Italy to Spain. Although his account of the history of the hendecasyllable does not strictly delineate a westward course of translatio , the phrase "se duelan los italianos de ver lo mejor de su poesía transferido en España" makes direct reference to the trope. Thus the theme of transition is shifted to a third level: when all poets make the transition that Boscán has already made, then poetry will transfer itself from Italy to Spain. No longer will the Spanish language need to extend itself abroad, but rather the richness of culture will be making the journey; significantly, Boscán here abandons the more limited concept of Castile to invoke that grander entity, Spain. He also considers the effect of his efforts on the republic of readers, and locates his adoption of the new genres, whatever the merits of his own poetry, in the larger context of a universal literary history. Boscán is thus himself the author of the position in the canon that he holds to this day, the innovator who brought the Italian forms to Spain, and the teacher of the great poet Garcilaso whose own works are the fourth book, the ultimate product, of Boscán's volume.

Yet there remains a lingering element of doubt in this triumphal projection. If the duchess should find his book in any way wanting, she should remember that he is only the instigator of the process, and "los primeros hazen harto en empeçar y los otros que después vienen quedan obligados a mejorarse" (the first do enough by initiating and those who follow are obliged to improve, 91); in this way, Boscán excuses his shortcomings and takes indirect credit for Garcilaso's achievements. Similarly, the translatio is still far away; in spite of his efforts, in spite even of Garcilaso, the shift has not yet occurred, so the duchess is reminded that he is only initiating a movement in which others will be obliged to succeed. With this closing, Boscán reverts to the trope of the recent restoration of let-

ters, employed by Bembo (whose Prose was the source for much of Boscán's poetic genealogy) when he portrayed himself beginning the task of restoring Italian to its trecento greatness, and adopted by him from the Latin humanists. Like Bembo, Boscán privileges Petrarch, "Petrarcha fué el primero que en aquella provincia le acabó de poner en su punto, y en éste se ha quedado y quedará, creo yo, para siempre" (Petrarch was the first in that land to have perfected them, and so they have remained and, I believe, always will remain, 90) and, as Reichenberger noted, attempts to fully classicize him by linking him to the Greeks (see "Boscán and the Classics," 99). Thus he introduces, at the end of the preface, a somewhat discordant and uncourtly note, transforming the trope about Petrarch and Boccaccio from a general recognition of their excellence and care (as it was for Encina and Valdés, who wrote "tengo [la lengua castellana] por más vulgar, porque veo que la toscana stá ilustrada y enriquezida por un Bocacio y un Petrarca" [I hold (the Castilian language) to be inferior, for I see that Italian is illustrated and enriched by a Boccaccio and a Petrarch, 44]) to a singling out of Petrarch as the greatest modern poet, with whom Spanish poets must struggle if poetic glory is ever to be brought to Spain. At the same time Boscán eliminates from his preface the references to military glory that had been the basis of Nebrija's and Encina's arguments, and implicit in Valdés's. The result is a psychologically much more complex relationship with Italy and in particular with Petrarch, one laden with anxiety. The introduction of the Bembist note imbues the closing of the preface with pessimism, and carries latent within it a host of ideological and aesthetic preoccupations with the imitation of a single canonical model, which are at odds with Boscán's primarily courtly orientation.

Writing of Boscán's epistle, Menéndez y Pelayo recognized that in spite of its simple form, it has all the importance of a manifesto (106), and Martí viewed the letter as an attempt at an art of poetry (38–40). To the degree that it is a serious exposition of the aesthetic shifts involved in the transition from traditional Castilian verse to the hendecasyllabic line, they are right. Bianchini on the other hand regretted that it "confounds rather than clarifies the issues and ideological shifts associated with the adaptation of the hendecasyllable to Spanish verse" ("A Note," 1).^[22] She too is right, for the letter is in

effect an anti-arte , in its rejection of systematic exposition of metrical and aesthetic issues. Boscán's pronouncements are truly radical, for they do not follow from the fifteenth-century Spanish tradition of systematizing poetic theory. He thus emerges for the careful reader of the letter as not just the almost inadvertent introducer of the sonnet into Spain, but as an important theorist, critic, and enthusiastic supporter of the new poetry. Written with Castiglione's indirection, its primary purpose is to secure the composition of Italianate poetry as an aristocratic activity, and the only fitting mode for a courtier. It does so by associating the old poetry, and its proponents, with lower social classes of unknown origins, while the new poetry is wrapped in the mantle of its Greco-Roman-Italian heritage, and in the social prestige of known members of the imperial court. Then he carefully lays the groundwork for change, as he considers the effect of his poetry on an expanding circle of readers, from courtiers who would have read it in manuscript, to the tiresome men who will have access to the book, to the republic of letters, both present and in the future, that will recognize his role in literary history. Boscán also succeeds at appropriating, even as he discredits them, the arguments of his critics to underline the real aesthetic differences between the forms. The obvious danger of affectation that such a novelty might pose is deflected, by arguing instead that adoption of the new modes was an act of sprezzatura on the poet's part.

The terms set by Boscán in his preface were to govern Spanish Petrarchism for the succeeding century. Through his appropriation of Castiglione and his use of an indirect, courtly manner to advance an argument, he privileges nonsystematic, circumstantial means of elucidating literary ideas. These instruments include self-styled "orations" on the Castilian language (see the first section of chapter 4), and in particular paratexts such as prefaces and commentaries. By identifying Petrarchism with the emperor's court, Boscán also transforms it into a metonymy for the empire, so that the practice of Petrarchism takes on a political dimension. Conversely, anyone opposed to the new forms is by implication opposed to the emperor, and to Spain's attainment of much-deserved literary glory. The strength of Spanish Petrarchism, however, is more than just political, for Boscán imported from his Italian sources the belatedness of the humanists. Bembo, in canonizing Petrarch as the only fitting model

for lyric poets, had transferred this belatedness to the vernacular, and Boscán brings to Spain the challenge of surpassing the achievements of a long-dead predecessor. No matter how eclectic a successor poet's sources, competition with Petrarch—and to a lesser degree with Garcilaso—will be the standard used for literary evaluation. Yet in the very act of canonizing the new forms in Spain, Boscán's recourse to the trope of the translatio shows him, half a century after Encina, still susceptible to feelings of inferiority to Italy, and still unsure about when the long-delayed ascendancy of Spain would finally occur. By seeking a legitimate Greco-Roman ancestry for Spanish poetry, he betrays the ethnic preoccupations that lay behind Spanish alterity and exacerbates the indigenous belatedness that had been present in Nebrija and Encina. For him, Spanish literature is not only inferior to Italian; it will remain so until Spanish poets forsake their native tradition and adopt the new, imported genres.

These however are superior not only because of their history, going back to Petrarch, Dante, and the Provençal poets, but also because, instead of confining the poet with rigid phonetic demands, they open up wider possibilities and are adaptable to a variety of circumstances. That Boscán makes these judgments shows that he had shifted the basis for judging poetry away from the received criteria employed by Encina and his predecessors to a new position more open to innovation and one that values different aspects of the lyric; such a judgment could not have been made without this shift first having taken place. Clearly, too, Boscán's contemporaries have not all made the same shift; so while the letter is aggressive in tone, it is defensive in nature. By 1543 the optimism of the Castiglione translation was gone. There are many possible reasons for this change: the heady days between the sack of Rome and the emperor's coronation had passed, and Spain, mired in continuous war, seemed no closer to its apogee. Nine years had elapsed, Garcilaso was dead, and Boscán himself was to be dead by the time the book was published. Italy itself had recovered from the sack, it remained culturally superior, and the cultural translatio had still not taken place. Yet poets like Garcilaso and Boscán are so imbued with Italian culture that they appropriated the Italians' own anxiety about their fourteenth-century predecessors, and their poetry was quickened

by the personal struggle with Petrarch. The appropriation is very evident in Boscán, whose attempt to rewrite the Rime sparse follows immediately after the prefatory, letter; it can also be seen in Garcilaso, who succeeds in finally absorbing and withstanding Petrarch's influence, and in attaining the status of an equal.