Love Poetry of the Literary Academies in the Reigns of Philip IV and Charles II (Monografías A)

This is the first book-length study devoted to the distinctive love poetry produced by the literary academies which dominated literary and social life across Spain during the seventeenth century, offering an insight into an important and neglected aspect of European Baroque culture. The author presents them as both a literary and a social institution, arguing that it is the combination of these two aspects which explains their enduring popularity and the development of their distinctive poetic. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the academy evolved from and in turn transformed contemporary Italian and Spanish practice. The distinctive nature of its poetry, mixing the erotic and the courtly, the frivolous and the metaphysical, not only debased the prevalent Petrarchan model and so accelerated its decline, but also influenced the verse of poets such as Quevedo, Góngora, and Lope de Vega.