Memory in Early Modern Spanish Poetry and Poetics: Rhetorical Traditions, Philosophical Debates, Political Contexts
This doctoral thesis explores how early modern Spanish lyric poets and poetic theorists shaped sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish culture and thought through their cross- disciplinary engagement with contemporary theories and practices of memory. Focusing on the works of Juan Boscán (ca. 1488-1542), Fernando de Herrera (ca. 1534-1597), and Juan de Jáuregui (1583-1641), I argue that Petrarchism, the period’s dominant poetic framework, became a cultural meta-discourse of memory in Spain. It allowed poets to absorb non-literary discourses (such as philosophy, medicine, law, theology, and politics) to stage memory in action, while its discursive porosity made it responsive to wider developments in the understanding of memory in other disciplines. Operating at the intersection of literary, cultural, and intellectual history, this thesis therefore reveals a cultural ecosystem where memory served as the epistemic, rhetorical, ethical, and political touchstone for lyric poetry and poetics. I demonstrate how Boscán, Herrera, and Jáuregui, because of their dual and rare condition as both poets and theorists, interrogated the nature and goals of poetry more than any of their peers, actively enlisting the period’s theories of memory to this end. As a result, they contributed to, and were shaped by, consequential debates about memory’s role in society, culture, and thought well beyond the boundaries of their craft. Furthermore, I examine how the alliance between memory and poetry enabled Boscán, Herrera, and Jáuregui to respond to and shape the cultural memory of significant political upheavals, including the consolidation of Habsburg rule after the comuneros revolt, the annexation of Portugal, the tortuous Spanish Indo-Pacific expansion, and the rocky relations between the Hispanic Monarchy and the Vatican. In so doing, I showcase how these poets approached individual and cultural memory as a continuum where psychology was never far away from politics, nor politics could be disassociated from rhetoric and ethics. As a result, this thesis advances a multidisciplinary and context-sensitive approach to early modern memory in its literary, cultural, and intellectual milieux, moreover foregrounding the Spanish contributions to wider European trends of the time.
Early modern Spain, Early modern Spanish literature, Memory, Poetry, Poetics, Philosophy, Rhetoric, Juan Boscán, Fernando de Herrera, Juan de Jáuregui, Luis de Góngora, Lyric, Petrarch, Petrarchism, Intellectual history, Cultural history, Politics, Baldassare Castiglione, Torquato Tasso, Giovanni Pontano, Marsilio Ficino, Aristotle, comuneros, Prudence, Theology, Arts of memory, Ginés de Sepúlveda
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