2—
Poetic Theory in the Reign of Charles V—
Castiglione and the Spanish Renaissance

The poets and courtiers Juan Boscán (ca. 1490–1542) and Garcilaso de la Vega (ca. 1501–536) transformed the nature of Spanish lyric in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, in part through the example of their poetic works, but also through their dissemination and appropriation of Italian courtly aesthetics. The impressive body of lyric that Boscán and Garcilaso produced, published in 1543, is examined in the next chapter; here I focus on their role as translators of Baldesar Castiglione's Il libro del Cortegiano . Published only six years after the first Italian edition, the Spanish version, done by Boscán at Garcilaso's instigation, set the terms for Spanish Petrarchist literary theory; although the Cortegiano does not expound any particular theory of poetry, such a theory can be construed from its discussion of linguistic, aesthetic, and social issues. This theory was highly inimical to the kind of poetry represented in the fifteent-hand early sixteenth-century poetic anthologies (cancioneros ), which was based on strict observance of complex prosodic rules. The theory also has important political and linguistic ramifications, for by associating such poetry with the cultural tastes of unaristocratic Castilian nativists, Boscán uses Castiglionian principles to identify his own Petrarchist poetry as a cosmopolitan cultural form more in keeping with the transnational empire of Charles V. The indirect manner—he translation of a dialogue on courtiership—through which Boscán and Garcilaso advance their views is itself an embodiment of the aesthetics of indirection and sprezzatura that they espouse. Consequently, Spanish poetic theory of this period must be gleaned from a variety of sources. Of particular importance is Boscá's preface to his poetic works; this, the major theoretical state-

ment of the period, employs indirect courtly rhetoric to disguise a presentation of aesthetic principles and a theory of literary history.

The Spanish Appropriation of IL Cortegiano

Traditional Spanish historiography emphasizes the importance of the Castilian—Netherlandic connection: the unexpected inheritance of Castile by Joan the Mad and her Flemish husband Philip the Handsome, and his premature death, leaving the Belgian-bred future Charles V as his heir. When the latter duly claimed his inheritance in 1517, his northern upbringing, and the many Flemish and Burgundian ministers and courtiers who accompanied him to Spain, were widely resisted, and his departure in 1520 to claim the imperial crown led to a widespread rebellion known as the revolt of the comuneros , in which the leading cities and much of the lower nobility took part. The repression of this movement discredited narrowly focused Castilian nationalism and its cultural manifestations, leaving the way open for new forms with the potential for expressing an international culture that befitted the transnational empire. Italian culture and manners presented just such an alternative, for Italy was not an entirely foreign country, but another part of Charles's far-flung realm. Yet the relationship to conquered Italy was psychologically complex; as Croce put it,

España e Italia tuvieron más de dos siglos de vida casi común a consecuencia de la dominación territorial y de la hegemonía española de nuestro país. El centro cultural de los italianos, o como se decía entonces, 'la corte', era Madrid; muchísimas familias españolas se habían establecido definitivamente en Italia; nobles y plebeyos italianos engrosaban las filas de los ejércitos de los Reyes Católicos; políticos y magistrados italianos figuraban en sus consejos; lengua, costumbres, y algunos de los monumentos de la literature española, tenían vigencia entre nosotros de la misma manera que nuestra lengua, literatura, y costumbres imponíanse en España. (11)

Spain and Italy had more than two centuries of almost conjugal life as a result of Spanish territorial domination and hegemony over our country. The cultural center for Italians, or as they then said, the "court," was Madrid; many Spanish families established themselves

definitively in Italy; both noble and plebeian Italians fattened the ranks of the Catholic monarchs' armies; Italian politicians and magistrates figured in their councils; the language, customs, and some of the monuments of Spanish literature ruled among us just as our language, literature, and customs imposed themselves on Spain.

From 1492 to 1503 the Spaniard Rodrigo Borgia presided over the church as Pope Alexander VI, while Ferdinand of Aragon, after twice intervening to foil the Neapolitan ambitions of the French monarchy, assumed direct rule over Naples in 1504, residing there for two years. Together these developments provided enormous opportunities to Spaniards for patronage in Italy, and these opportunities did not diminish in the succeeding years. As Croce showed, the presence of so many Spaniards in Italy and Italians in Spain had a profound effect on many areas of life, particularly in the cultural and linguistic realms.

The exchange of people and the transformation of cultures only increased after Charles's ascension to the joint thrones of Castile, Aragon, and Naples. From the beginning of his reign, his major foreign preoccupation was a rivalry with the French king, Francis I; after Charles secured the imperial election in 1519, that rivalry was principally played out in Italy. Francis repeatedly invaded the peninsula, but after his capture at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, Milan became yet another of Charles's possessions. On a symbolic plane, the Spanish domination over Italy was represented by the sack of Rome in 1527; though carried out by predominantly German troops under the command of a renegade Frenchman, the army was at least nominally the emperor's, and the attack left Charles, and thus Spain, the undisputed major player in Italian affairs. The sack both shocked and amazed contemporaries; over the years it was followed by other signs of Spanish hegemony, such as the imperial coronation in Bologna (1530) and Charles's speech, in Spanish, to the Roman curia (1536; see Fernández Alvarez, 65–67, 83–88, 106–7). To contemporary observers, these events could only mark the eventual ascendancy of Spain in the cultural as well as the military spheres.

The pope's nuncio in Spain at the time of the sack was Count Baldesar Castiglione (1478–1529), whose Libro del Cortegiano , a work steadily elaborated and revised for nearly twenty years (see Guidi, "Reformulations"), was first printed in 1528. Castiglione had been negotiating with Venetian printers before the sack, and his motiva-

tion for publishing it may well have been, as he claims in his dedication to Michel de Silva, to counter the unauthorized circulation of a manuscript copy by Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara. Yet his publication, at this time, of a nostalgic and fictionalized evocation of Italian court life from a generation before may have had an added significance as well. The elaboration of the text took place over the backdrop of growing Spanish domination of Italian affairs; Castiglione, who was shortly to write of himself, "non mi riputarò giammai di essere meno spagnuolo che italiano" (I will never again consider myself less Spanish than Italian, quoted in Guidi, "L'Espagne," 201 n. 399), was both fixing for eternity an idealization of Italian culture and asserting its superiority over that of the nation he now called home.

In 1534, the Cortegiano was translated into Spanish by Boscán at the instigation of Garcilaso de la Vega, who also revised the translation. Just as in the sack of Rome Spanish troops had made off with the cultural artifacts of the premier Italian city, so by translating Castiglione's work the poets appropriated the book's teaching, making it available to Spaniards and thereby transferring the locus of its reception and influence. For if the book proclaims Italian culture of a certain time as a model, the translation asserts that the relevant audience for that model, the place where the imitation is to be realized, is Spain. That the Castiglione-Boscán Libro del cortesano should be a major document for the development of Spanish Petrarchist poetic theory may seem surprising; the book was translated into other European languages, and Petrarchism spread throughout Europe, but the two developments are not usually linked, other than as marking the general spread of Italian influence.^[1] Most criticism of Castiglione is concerned with divining his intended meaning; those who consider Il Cortegiano primarily in an Italian context see the work as hostile to the Bembist conception of Petrarchism as a vernacular analogue to Ciceronianism and as a linguistic determination that writers should use only the idiom that had been used by Petrarch and Boccaccio. But consideration of the work's reception in the Spanish cultural context is a different matter. Boscán's translation of Castiglione's text must naturally be the point of departure, but to gauge its importance for Spanish poetic theory, one must also perform a purposeful misreading of the text, emphasizing how it would have been read in Spain, and how it was appropriated by

Boscán and Garcilaso in support of the generic transformations they were effecting in Spanish poetry.^[2]

Surprisingly, Castiglione's book is not overly concerned with poetry, a topic about which the speakers have little to say directly. But from scattered comments, primarily but not exclusively in book 1, a theory of poetry can be construed. As already noted, the author is hostile to Petrarchism as a literary idiom. In the preface dedicated to de Silva, written shortly before the book's publication in 1528, the author rejects the use of a Tuscan norm:

No convenía usar yo muchas [palabras] de las del Bocacio, las cuales en su tiempo se usaban, mas agora ya andan desechadas aún por los mismos toscanos. Tampoco he querido obligarme a la costumbre del hablar toscano de nuestros tiempos. (16)

I did not find it desirable to use many of Boccaccio's [words], which in his day were used but now are abandoned even by the Tuscans themselves. Nor have I wanted to force on myself the usage of the Tuscan spoken in our time.

Castiglione protests too much, for in fact he submitted his text to revision and Tuscanization by none other than Bembo himself. Yet ordinarily one need not describe one's choice of language, for its very use demonstrates the choice that has been made; thus this statement is an example of how Castiglione means his book to be both didactic and exemplary—as Kinney put it, "it is what it is about" (134). These remarks sum up an extended discussion in book 1, written ten years earlier, in which Count Ludovico de Canossa and Federico Fregoso debate the issue of literary idiom. The identity of these speakers is important, for both are central contributors to the dialogue. Canossa is entrusted by Emilia Pia, in book 1, to form the verbal portrait of the ideal courtier, while Federico was the original proponent of the game of defining the courtier, and in book 2 he takes Canossa's place as the principal speaker. The comments of both speakers should thus be taken seriously, for neither is ordinarily a straw figure making arguments to be defeated.

Yet here Federico seems to be on the losing end of the discussion. The count recommends to the ideal courtier a literary idiom based on his actual speech, counseling the avoidance of affectation in the form of ancient Tuscan words that have fallen into disuse. But Fed-

erico holds out for a certain acuity (Boscán, "una cierta agudeza sustancial," 65; Castiglione, "acutezza recondita," 1.30) in writing attainable by using a distinctive vocabulary, and criticizes any reader unable to understand it. We should follow Petrarch and Boccaccio, he declares; Virgil himself did not hesitate to imitate Homer (66–67). But the count maintains that Petrarch and Boccaccio did not use words that were outdated in their own day, and as only rustics use them now, such words are no longer part of sophisticated speech.

There follows a defense of modernity based on the concept of linguistic mutability, the growth and decay of words, and the pleasure of neologisms.^[3] The resulting language would be common to all Italy, yet heterogeneous, like a garden full of different flowers. But Federico continues to argue for a vernacular Ciceronianism:

[A] mí no me cabe que en una lengua particular, la cual no es universalmente a todos los hombres así propria, . . . sino una invinción contenida debaxo de ciertos términos, no sea más razón tener fin a seguir aquellos que hablan mejor, que hablar a caso; y que, como en el latín el hombre se debe esforzar a parecer a Virgilio o a Cicerón más aína que a Silio o a Cornelio Tácito; así también en el vulgar no se haya de tener por mejor seguir la manera de hablar de Petrarca y de Bocacio que la de los otros. (78–79)

I do not see why in a particular language, which is not the universal property of all . . . but is an invention ruled by certain conventions, it would not be more reasonable to follow those who speak better, than to speak randomly; and just as in Latin we should make the effort to resemble Virgil and Cicero more than Silius or Cornelius Tacitus, should it not be better also in the vernacular to follow the speech of Petrarch and Boccaccio than that of others.

To Federico, language is not idiolectical but diachronically social; its beauty consists in observing the propriety of words and using them in the same way as did those who wrote best, in following their style. But the count retorts that many praise Cicero and Virgil only because they have heard them praised, without knowing why; in reality Caesar, Varro, and others, though using different words, are just as good.

Here Emilia Pia ends the discussion; by her interruption Castiglione grants the count the final word, rejecting linguistic Petrarchism

as he declares his objections to a vocabulary limited to old Tuscan words, in favor of a more contemporary and cosmopolitan idiom; as Guidi notes ("L'Espagne," 164), Castiglione, perhaps to avoid insulting an old friend, never has the Bembo in the dialogue speak in defense of his eponym's linguistic theories. Thus, while alluding to the questione della lingua , Castiglione also implicitly rejects it; Emilia Pia's repeated attempts at interrupting the debate indicate both that the issue cannot be resolved and, worse, that it is essentially tiresome.^[4] Instead of an absolute linguistic standard, Castiglione prefers an aesthetic one; deconstructing the example of Virgil imitating Homer, Canossa points out that they wrote in different languages. The issue thus is not linguistic purity, but stylistic—and thus aesthetic—borrowing. To privilege words as the Petrarchists do is to separate them from their meaning. Going against the book's general preference for manner over substance, Canossa asserts that "lo que más importa y es más necesario al Cortesano para hablar y escribir bien, es saber mucho" (what is most important and most necessary for the Courtier, if he is to speak and write well, is to know much, 70), and to a question about whether such refined speech would be intelligible, the count replies that "la facilidad y la llaneza siempre andan con la elegancia" (ease and plainness always accompany elegance, 71). That aesthetic standard is all-pervasive in Castiglione's book, and it is here that one finds a key to his influence on Spanish poetic theory. By appropriating, even as he rejects them, the terms of the questione , Castiglione prepares the way for a new standard of literary evaluation that is potentially applicable in any national or linguistic context.^[5]

Related to the aesthetization of life is Castiglione's transformation of the nature of the ludic, which comes to include former nonludic areas of life. This is underlined at the beginning of the book when the courtiers are choosing the game that is to be the night's activity. After the feasting and music are over, the duchess, herself a substitute for the crippled and absent duke, delegates to Emilia Pia the task of devising a game for the evening's entertainment; she in turn decrees that each person should propose a new game until one emerges that strikes her fancy. Thomas Greene ("Il Cortegiano and the Choice of a Game," in Hanning and Rosand, 1–16) notes how the other games rejected by Emilia Pia also emphasize the importance of play, as do the enclosed space, the circle of participants,

etc. Yet this echo of the Decameron is also a ludic mise en abîme that transforms all life into a game; as Regosin put it, "the courtier is thus that which forms itself through its art—with words or with other signs, as we shall see—and that which performs itself to earn the name of courtier. Courtiership is not a state or a mode of being but an attribution, a name given—and taken away—by a public which judges the performance; it is not a signified but a signifier" (24). Like Greene, Regosin notes that the proposed and rejected games are important examples of rules of the larger game that is courtiership (33–36), and that they demonstrate the unlimited amplitude required if the discussion is to perform its role of a pastime (30–31).

The key to all this ludic activity is sprezzatura , which "signifies that i) there is no art; ii) there is art but it is so well-hidden that it does not show; iii) if there were art the actor could do even better than he has done" (Regosin, 37). Yet the fact that all activity is ludic and aesthetic permits a kind of synesthesia; as already noted, Castiglione has relatively little to say about verbal art, but the principles for such art, and specifically for poetry, can be induced on the basis of his comments about other arts.^[6] Sprezzatura (generally translated by Boscán as descuido ; see Morreale, 163–64; Terracini, Lingua come problema , 55–70), as described by the count, is not only an aesthetic principle but also a universal one:

Pero pensando yo mucho tiempo entre mí, de dónde pueda proceder la gracia, no curando agora de aquella que viene de la influencia de las estrellas, hallo una regla generalísima, la cual pienso que más que otra ninguna aprovecha acerca desto en todas las cosas humanas que se hagan o se digan; y es huir cuanto sea posible el vicio que de los latinos es llamado afetación; nosotros, aunque en esto no tenemos vocablo proprio, podremos llamarle curiosidad o demasiada diligencia y codicia de parecer mejor que todos . . . usando en toda cosa un cierto desprecio o descuido, con el cual se encubra el arte y se muestre que todo lo que se hace y se dice, se viene hecho de suyo sin fatiga y casi sin habello pensado. (59)

But after myself considering for a long time where grace comes from, excluding for now that which comes from the influence of the stars, I arrived at a general rule which I believe more than any other will enable one to employ it in all things done or said; and that is to flee as much as possible from the vice the Romans called affectation, and

which we who have no proper word for it might call curiosity or excessive diligence and a desire to seem better than anyone else . . . employing in all things a certain disdain or carelessness that hides skill, and shows that all things one does or says, are done for themselves without effort and almost without thought.

Sprezzatura is thus applicable to all human actions, of word or deed. This view is borne out by the succeeding examples the count gives of sprezzatura in action: while the first, of ancient orators who pretended to be unlearned so that their speeches might be more persuasive, is a literary one, it is quickly followed by examples from other arts. First come the two courtiers, one who dances affectedly on tiptoe, one who pretends such negligence that he allows his cape to fall off. This example is followed by a discussion of music, in which too many consonances are unbearable, and excessive harmony should be moderated, so that "lo bueno puesto cabe lo malo parece muy mejor" (the good placed next to the bad appears even better, 61). In painting, Apelles reproached Prothogenes for never knowing when to stop; even the application of cosmetics has something to teach about the nature of sprezzatura .

Just as the other arts provide lessons applicable to literature, so too the inverse, as the traditional literary precept of imitatio is applied to the development of a personal, graceful style of comportment, and just as linguistic Petrarchism is abandoned, so too its methodological underpinnings are also implicitly discarded. The count rejects specific rules for gracefulness, but recommends choosing as a model one who has already achieved it, and instructs the hopeful first to imitate closely, seeking almost to transform themselves into the object of imitation, and then to move on to the imitation of other models, concluding with the famous image of the bee going from flower to flower, "tomando, ora del uno y ora del otro, diversas cosas" (taking, first from one, then from another, diverse things, 58), but ultimately making its own honey. This figure is in turn followed by an account of a failed attempt at imitation, that of the courtier who picked up only King Ferdinand's mannerisms and not his essential grace, and thus became an object of derision (see Kinney, 101). The technique of inductively defining sprezzatura by repeated example rather than by precept is consistent with Castiglione's general rejection of absolute rules. The adduced examples, from every field of human activity, lead ultimately to a complete

breakdown in any workable distinction between life and art, reality and game; and while this results in the aesthetization and ludicization of everyday lives, it also rejects art as an activity that stands in some kind of opposition to reality. Artistic accomplishment is no longer to be defined by a specific set of rules, but by the good taste that the courtier must take pains to develop:

La buena costumbre de hablar no es ésa, sino la que nace de los hombres de ingenio, los cuales con la dotrina y esperiencia han alcanzado a tener buen juicio. . . . ¿No sabéis vos que las figuras del hablar, las cuales clan mucha gracia y lustre a la habla, todas son abusiones de la reglas gramaticales? Pero son admitidas y confirmadas por el uso, sin poderse dar otra razón dello sino solamente porque agradan y suenan bien al oído y traen suavidad y dulzura. (74)

Good usage in speech is none other than that which springs from men of talent, who with knowledge and experience have attained good judgment. . . . Don't you know that figures of speech, which give it such grace and luster, are all violations of grammatical rules? But they are permitted and confirmed by their use, with no other justification than that they give pleasure, sound good to the ear, and bring gravity and sweetness.

This pleasantness in speech is the governing virtue of linguistic discourse, an attitude concordant with the earlier recollection of ancient orators who strove to make their speech as natural as possible; the full impact of this recommendation is evident when it is juxtaposed to the requirement that writing be like recorded speech, and thus not subject to any particular rules or entitled to any licenses. Once again the line between ludic and nonludic activities is blurred.

We can now analyze how this breakdown of the distinction between art and life, ludic and nonludic, augurs a new kind of poetry for Spain. Castiglione's conception of poetry (and, by extension, Boscán's and Garcilaso's), and of artistic activity in general, is antithetical to that of Encina and the other fifteenth-century Spanish theorists. In their view, poetry was a distinct activity, separated in terms of social function and time from everyday life. The poet might aspire to be the equal of the patron, but by that very aspiration he revealed his difference and inferiority; his occupation, or negocio , is what the nobleman practiced only in his moments of leisure, or ocio . Castiglione expressly extends aesthetization to the activities of everyday

life (or at least, the everyday life of the courtier), breaking down the general ocio/negocio dichotomy. Life itself becomes aesthetic, and aesthetics (a guide to conduct in the dangerous world of the courtier; see Javitch, "Il Cortegiano," in Hanning and Rosand, 17–28) is life. The new kind of poetry must be one that conforms to the principle of sprezzatura , that permits itself to hide its own artfulness; the new poet is not the man of letters, but the professional dilettante.

If this breakdown is implicit in Castiglione, it becomes explicit in Boscán, who in his translation emphasizes the point by using the Latinism ocio only once, in a pejorative context in book 4. Otherwise he uses the more colloquial sosiego , which, while generally synonymous, is not the specific Latinate lexeme preferred by fifteenth-century theorists such as Santillana and Encina.^[7] The old poetry depended on the distinction between ocio and negocio , for it was obviously artistic; by abandoning the principle of ocio , Boscán and Garcilaso appropriate Il Cortegiano , for three purposes. First and most obviously, Castiglione values the practice of art by the nobility, and indeed insists that the ideal courtier do so as well. In the context of continuing Spanish resistance to the commingling of arms and letters, this assertion of superior Italian manners can only be helpful. But for letters to be made fully aristocratic, the nonnoble, educated letrado must be excluded from the ludic world of the court. This is the Spanish poets' second purpose: to assert that poetry is not only an aristocratic activity, but an exclusively aristocratic activity from which those not graced with courtly sprezzatura , those who must labor to learn rules, are excluded. Third, the nature of poetry is transformed so that it may properly screen courtier from noncourtier, the latter a category that includes both letrados and the lower nobility, two groups seriously implicated in the comunero rebellion (see Lynch, 1.45). The circle of the court is to be a special ground between the literate world of the chancery and the military world of the nobility, with its own criteria for admission.

Both Castiglione and his Spanish translators reject the notion of an arte , a systematic set of rules defining acceptable conduct. The old poetry was predicated on the mastery of just such a set of prosodic rules; the new poetry will not only violate those rules, but also privilege completely different facets of lyric poetry. Aspects of Castiglione's new theory of poetry can be ascertained by examining remarks, scattered throughout the book, about the nature of verbal

art. Written language should approximate spoken language, for "lo escrito no es otra cosa sino una forma de hablar que queda después que el hombre ha hablado" (writing is nothing more than a form of speech that remains after one has spoken, 64); the proximity of spoken language to written language by extension approximates verse to prose.^[8] Apparent spontaneity is also a virtue, even if it involves a certain amount of duplicity. Yet the ability to compose poetry is important for the courtier, for the count requires that he be "en las letras más que medianamente instruído . . . y tuviese noticia, no sólo de la lengua latina, mas aun de la griega" (in letters more than passably educated . . . with knowledge, not only of Latin, but even of Greek, 87). Poetry and oratory, as well as history, should be part of his reading matter, and he should practice writing in meter and prose, especially in the vernacular, "porque demás de lo clue él gustará dello, terná en esto un buen pasatiempo para entre mujeres, las cuales ordinariamente huelgan con semejantes cosas" (because in addition to his personal enjoyment, he will have in this a good pastime for women, who often entertain themselves with such things, 87). If not worthy of praise, the courtier should keep the poems quiet, but he should still write, for it will help him appraise the writing of others.

I have already noted how, in contrast to the count's preference for a written style that approximates speech, Federico Fregoso prefers a more piquant manner, which he would achieve through the use of old Tuscan words. Federico becomes the chief speaker in book 2, much of which is also important for a theory of lyric. Like the count, he values above all the avoidance of affectation, and links this to a theory of decorum:

La primera y más importante [reglal es que huya (como muy bien trató ayer el señor Conde) sobre todo el vicio de la afetación. Tras esto, considers atentamente la calidad de lo que hace o dice, el lugar, en presencia de quién, a qué tiempo, la causa por que lo hace, la edad y profesión suya, el fin donde tiene ojo y los medios con que puede llegar allá. (117)

The first and most important [rule] is that he above all flee (as the count very well explained yesterday) the vice of affectation. After this, let him pay attention to the nature of what he does or says, the place, in whose presence, the time, the reason he does it, his age and profes-

sion, the end on which he has his sights and the means through which he can attain it.

The result is not a uniformity of style but the selection of an appropriate tone, depending on the circumstances and the addressee. Thus Castiglione demonstrates an openness to different stylistic registers, exemplified by the varying levels of the discussion and in particular of the contributors. The mediocrità of the dialogue is achieved not through a monotone but through the collective speech of the contributors.

The balance of book 2 is devoted to a discussion of joking, important because of the value Castiglione places on wit. Federico, who earlier had argued for acuity in the courtier's written style, here employs related terms to describe the function of humor. Verbal humor is subdivided into funny stories and witty remarks; while the gift of telling the former is inborn, the latter are the result of "festividad o urbanidad" (festivity or urbanity, 161; see Morreale, 209–10). He proceeds:

La otra suerte de donaires es breve, y está solamente en los dichos prestos y agudos [Castiglione: pronti e acuti , 2.43], y que alguna vez pican . . . y aun parece que no tienen gracia si no muerden. (161–62)

The other kind of pleasantry is brief, and just consists of quick, sharp remarks that sometimes even sting . . . it even seems that they have no grace if they do not bite.

The phrase "agudos y que alguna vez pican" recalls the vocabulary Federico himself had used in book 1 to describe the desired effect of Tuscanisms on the courtier's written style, and thus serves to connect that linguistic and stylistic discussion to this one. When Bibbiena takes over the lead in the discussion of humor, he again employs Federico's terms. Jokes occupy a special place in the heavily regimented world of the courtier; laughter is provoked by something that, like sprezzatura , "en sí no conviene, y con todo esto no está mal" (in itself doesn't conform, and yet is not all bad, 166). The rhetoric of provoking laughter is closely related to that of serious praise and blame, and often the same words can produce opposite effects; for this reason, observing the rules of decorum is even more important in witticisms than in everyday speech. Joking thus as-

sumes a hyperludic function in the world of the courtier. Special acuity (Boscán: "presta agudeza," 178; Castiglione: "pronta acutezza," 2.57) can be attained by using words or expressions with two meanings, by saying the unexpected, or by appropriating a proverb or well-known verse to different circumstances. Thus, ultimately, humor too is subject to the rules of sprezzatura .

The connection between joking and poetry is enhanced in Boscáan's translation, as he provides extended glosses to those principles cited by Bibbiena which promote wit, but which also have literary applications (see Morreale, 211). Thus, for example, ambiguity—"facezie che nascono dalla ambiguità" (pleasantries born from ambiguity, 2.58)—becomes "aquellas [gracias] . . . que nacen de una palabra o razón que se puede echar a dos sentidos, lo cual entre los latinos, especialmente en este caso, se llama ambigüidad" (those graceful remarks . . . which are born from a word or phrase that can be taken in two senses, which among the Romans, especially in cases such as this, was called ambiguity, 178); and paronomasia—"bischizzi" (2.61)—becomes "una suerte . . . de dichos, la cual vulgarmente llamamos derivar" (a type of remark that we in the vernacular call to derive , 181). Among the other principles that receive extended glossing are metaphor, irony, and incongruity.

The discussion of humor takes on additional importance because wit is singled out by Castiglione as one of the special virtues of the Spanish (161); this is only one of the many times, particularly in book 2, that Castiglione celebrates Spanish courtiership.^[9] They are better courtiers than the French (134), and even their dress is superior:

Verdad es que yo querría que no siguiesen los estremos, echando demasiadamente a la una parte o a la otra, como el hábito francés que ecede en ser muy ancho, y el tudesco en ser muy angosto, sino que fuesen como los que, tomando del uno y del otro, son corregidos y reducidos en mejor forma. . . . pero en lo demás, querría que mostrasen el sosiego y la gravedad de la nación española; porque lo de fuera muchas veces da señal de lo de dentro. (141)

I would prefer them not to go to extremes, tending too much to one part or another, as is the French way of dressing which is excessively loose and the German in being very tight, but rather that, taking from

one and the other, they be corrected and reduced to the best form. . . . But as to the rest, I would wish them to show the sobriety and gravity of the Spanish, for externals are often signs of the internal.

This passage is significant, not only for appropriating a standard trope of literary criticism already used in book 1 (like the bees going from flower to flower, etc.) and applying it to yet another realm of experience. The context for the passage is a discussion of how Italians no longer have a distinctive manner of dress, but instead copy Frenchmen, Germans, and even Turks, and the fear that this imitation augurs their eventual domination by outsiders. Castiglione's Italian readers. looking back in the late 1520S to 1506 (the fictitious date of the conversation in Urbino), see here a melancholy warning of the extinction of the independent Italian courts and a preferential option for the Spanish, ultimate victors in the struggle for the peninsula. But for Boscán's Spanish audience, these remarks herald the extension of Spanish hegemony over Italy, their mode of dress anticipating, on one plane, the sack of Rome and, on another, the translated text in their hands.

Yet for the translatio to be fully realized, Spanish cultural life needed to be transformed. The old poetry, which could be judged good or bad on the basis of established rules, would no longer do, for a poetic meritocracy could exclude aristocrats from the tenuous world of acceptable courtiership, or even admit educated commoners like Encina; as Whigham has argued, it is important to Castiglione that he replace a meritocracy of achievement with an aristocracy based on manner. Similarly, the old poetry must be replaced with a new kind to be evaluated on the basis of new aesthetic criteria, for its facility, its wit, its artificial naturalness. No longer can it be marginalized as a pastime for women and an occupation for lettered servants; the latter are now definitively excluded, while the former are elevated and at the same time judged by many of the same standards as men:

Quiero que esta Dama tenga noticia de letras, de música, de pinturas, y sepa danzar bien, y traer, como es razón, a los que andan con ella de amores, acompañando siempre con una discreta templanza, y con dar buena opinión de sí, todas aquellas otras consideraciones que han sido enseñadas al Cortesano. (234)

I wish the Lady to have a knowledge of letters, of music, of painting, and to know how to dance well and to bring along, as is reasonable, those who are in love with her, always accompanying all those other considerations that have been taught to the Courtier with a discreet restraint and creating a good opinion of herself.

These remarks lead the misogynist Gaspar Pallavicino to grumble, "pues dais a las mujeres las letras . . . no queráis también que ellas gobiernen las ciudades, y hagan las leyes, y traigan los exércitos, y que los hombres se estén quedos hilando, o en la cocina" (for as you give women letters . . . won't you also want them to govern cities, make laws, and lead armies, while men remain quiet, spinning or in the kitchen, 235). To the threatened traditionalist, Castiglione's rules are tantamount to a complete social inversion, a world turned upside down.

As noted at the beginning, there is nothing inherent in the Italian text, or even in Boscán's translation, that specifically heralds a revolution in lyric poetry, an idea alien to the conservative Castiglione. As Javitch conceded, "Poetry had always possessed and been seen to possess the ornamental, deceptive, and playful properties that proper court conduct eventually shared with it. In fact, the Renaissance courtly code, as Castiglione defines it, drew many of its rules for beautifying the self from traditional procedures in verbal and pictorial art. . . . I do not mean to suggest, therefore, that the art of poetry needed the example of beautiful manners to come of age" (Poetry , 105). It is only the application of Castiglione's doctrine to Spain, its appropriation and grafting by Boscán and Garcilaso into the Spanish cultural polysystem, and its reception by a different audience that suggest these results. Only in Italy, and only to readers familiar with the questione , is there an inherent contradiction between the linguistic positions espoused by Canossa and those articulated by Federico Fregoso. In Spain a synthesis is possible, one suggested by the fact that Virgil could write in Latin and still borrow from Homer. If such interlinguistic imitation was possible in ancient times, and indeed was instrumental in the transfer of cultural dominance from Greece to Rome, the same procedure could again be used in their own day: Spanish poets need only adopt an urbane courtly idiom, while imitating Petrarch's style.^[10] Such a procedure would allow the devolution to Spain of Petrarch's agudeza,

the very same quality identified in book 2 as a particularly Spanish talent.

Furthermore, by translating Il Cortegiano , Boscán and Garcilaso produce a text that is revolutionary in a uniquely courtly manner: indirect rather than tendentious, suggestive rather than didactic.^[11] Their successful adherence to these aesthetic values, in prologues scattered throughout their various works, has led to a depreciation of early sixteenth-century Spanish poetic theory: there seems to be a gap between Encina and Herrera, there is nothing comparable to Du Bellay's 1549 Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse . That text, however, would have seemed to partisans of Castiglione's aesthetic a terrible throwback to the days of specific rules for specific genres, and of the Horatian isolation of the poet in his studies. Castiglione prefers to teach by example rather than by systematic pronouncement. Repeatedly the main speakers in Il Cortegiano reject attempts to pressure them into pronouncing a set of rules for speaking, writing, dressing, joking, and so on. Instead they provide examples, analogies, comparisons, and general principles, such as the avoidance of affectation, that are meant to provoke in the quick recipient a development of his or her own individualized style. Castiglione's hostility to established and objective rules pervades Spanish poetic theory for the next century. The more seriously we take Castiglione's rejection of specific rules and lists of rules, and the more we are attuned to his aesthetic preference for manner, example, and disinvoltura , the more we will perceive his influence on Spanish poetic theory, both in method and in substance, and the more we will recognize the sophistication of the Spanish texts.

Not surprisingly, Castiglione's influence is evident in the prefaces by Boscán and Garcilaso to the translation. Touching on many of the topics associated with lyric theory, the prefaces are exemplars of courtly prose, combining a formal dedication to Gerónima Palova de Almogávar with a theory of intervernacular translation, a defense of women, and an evaluation of the contemporary situation of Castilian literature. Boscán attempts to display sprezzatura by belittling his own talent and effort, and by crediting all his success to the inspiration of Garcilaso and Doña Gerónima. He ascribes his interest in the book to Garcilaso's having sent it: both the title and the identity of the sender moved him to read it right away, and he immediately wanted to translate it so that "los hombres de nuestra

nación participasen de tan buen libro y que no dexasen de entendelle por falta de entender la lengua" (the men of our nation could benefit from such a good book and not fail to understand it for lack of knowledge of the language, 5). He initially held back, however, because of a general distaste for translation, to him a vain task that even when well done is worth little. Fortunately, Doña Gerónima overruled his doubts by commanding him to translate it, so the book is truly hers, to correct or to censure. The book is about the perfect courtier and lady, a topic so important that his little shortcomings should be forgiven, and while the author touches on many grave themes that some would consider inappropriate for women, science is so intermingled with pleasure, and even the most severe philosophy is handled with such artifice, that only the most foolish would find the book objectionable. Doña Gerónima has never sealed herself off from such topics, and by favoring the book she can put a stop to the complaints.

Courtly indirection, as typified by the triple negatives of the statement quoted above (no/dexasen/por falta), determines Boscán's pose of ambivalence about the value of translation. As Morreale has shown (15–26), his declaration of principles, with its rejection of word-for-word translation in favor of translating the general sense, fits into a long tradition dating back to St. Jerome. Equally important however is Boscán's, distinction between translation of the classics, with attendant problems about the possible insufficiency of Castilian, and translation between vernacular languages. Boscán uses two different words for the two types: the former is romancear , meaning to make vernacular, while the latter is traducir , with the implication of leading the text across linguistic boundaries: "traducir este libro no es propriamente romanzalle, sino mudalle de una lengua vulgar en otra quizá tan buena" (translating this book is not, properly speaking, making it vernacular but moving it from one vernacular language to another perhaps as good, 5). Boscán is willing to accept the possible inferiority of Castilian to the classical languages, as suggested by the homely romancear; but traducir is a Latinism, reflecting a more sophisticated awareness of the plurality and equality of vernaculars.^[12] As Morreale (22–23) and Terracini (Lingua come problema , 70) both note, Boscán attempts to prove the capacity of Castilian by avoiding neologisms, but with the result that words become imprecise and polyvalent as they acquire new

meanings. Yet the element of personal taste in Boscán's linguistic choices is itself, in Castiglione's terms, a virtue. Boscán, forced to confront discrepancies in the languages—particularly in those sections most closely associated with Italian court life—rather than adhere to a vocabulary that would highlight its foreignness, appropriates the text, both in order to make the original more Spanish, and to advance his and Garcilaso's aesthetic agenda. The struggle to conquer Italy is an analogue to the struggle to hispanize the original text, as suggested by the etymological roots of traducir , with its implication of leading away, and overtones of wartime booty, of the enslavement of foreigners, and of the sacking of Italy.^[13] The word emphasizes the materiality of the book's contents, as does the phrase "por ser de cosa que traemos siempre entre las manos" (it being about things we always have in our hands, 5), as well as the particularity of that subject matter which will be useful for Spaniards to have, in order that the translatio take place.^[14]

Garcilaso's preface, while rather more gallant, touches on many of the same themes. After declaring that Doña Gerónima's approval of the book is its greatest virtue, he too moves on to issues of translation theory, echoing Boscán's distinction between romancear and traducir . The terms of his praise for the fidelity of Boscán's version recall longstanding theories of translation and interpretation: Boscán was a very faithful translator, for he tied himself not to the rigors of the letter, but to the truth of the sentences, and through different paths he put in Castilian all the strength and ornament of the Italian, and thus left everything as he found it. It being as difficult to translate as to write anew, Boscán did well, for the book does not seem to have been written in another language. Echoing Castiglione, Garcilaso explains that he urged Boscán to publish it before someone else printed an inferior text, and even undertook the Horatian task of polishing his friend's work.

Even more interesting than Garcilaso's comments on translation theory are the specific terms in which he praises this particular work. As Terracini noted (150), his praise is based on both its subject matter, preserved by Boscán's exemplary fidelity, and its style, characterized by "naturaleza" (naturalness), "limpieza" (cleanness), and other formal qualities. Men and women must not only try to do the best, but also to avoid what might degrade, and this book treats of both. Therefore it was important to have it available in the Castilian

language, "porque . . . apenas ha nadie escrito en nuestra lengua sino lo que se pudiera muy bien escusar, aunque esto sería malo de probar con los que traen entre las manos estos libros que matan hombres" (because . . . almost no one has written in our language anything save that which we could well have done without, although this would be difficult to prove to those who go about with lethal books in their hands, 10). In these comments about other works in Castilian, Garcilaso goes beyond Boscán's critique of earlier translations, to find no other prose works worthy of praise; Terracini correctly interprets "estos libros que matan" as an aesthetic rather than a moral evaluation. Boscán thus accomplished in Castilian something few others have, "que fué huir del afetación sin dar consigo en ninguna sequedad, y con gran limpieza de estilo usó de términos muy cortesanos y muy admitidos de los buenos oídos, y no nuevos ni al parecer desusados de la gente" (that is, to flee affectation without becoming dry and with great cleanness of style he used very courtly terms that are accepted by the best ears, rather than those which are new or apparently neglected by people, 10). Here, as Terracini noted (Lingua come problema , 151–52), Garcilaso comes closest to appropriating Castiglione's aesthetic terms in order to praise Boscán. Variations in style are due to the desire that not all characters speak equally well, for he was trying to show all of the different manners of speech; this emphasis recalls Castiglione's own contention that mediocrità can best be realized through a balance in stylistic registers, and that ugliness is sometimes necessary in order to set off the beautiful better.

While Boscán's preface focuses more on specific issues of translation theory and the translatability of this particular book, Garcilaso amplifies the issues. The general poverty and dependence of Spanish literature become more evident in the stylistic inferiority of other contemporary texts, and in the need for Boscán's translation as a model. This translation is praised in courtly terms, showing how for Garcilaso it will function in a double way: first, as the exposition of certain aesthetic principles and, second, as the fulfillment of those principles, attaining an exemplary role for future writers of Castilian prose. The fact that the original already exists in Italian shows the belatedness of Spanish letters, but the translation will serve in its new context just as the original did in its; to paraphrase the earlier quotation from Kinney, it will be what it is about. Boscán's preface,

written at the conclusion of a possibly thankless task that must have consumed a considerable amount of time, shows him attempting to justify that task in terms of its accomplishment. Garcilaso's preface, written from Italy just as the poet is beginning to produce his greatest poems, shows his consciousness of the gap between the countries, and at the same time of the possibility that it can be overcome.

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.