Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 La poesía mutante del Siglo de Oro
- Part 1 Poetry in Creation
- 2 Moving in …Garcilaso de la Vega's ‘Dulces prendas por mi mal halladas’
- 3 The Movement of Thought and Feeling in the ‘Ode to Juan de Grial’
- 4 Metaphors of Movement in Two Poems of Fray Luis de León
- 5 El tiempo medido en versos: Camila Lucinda en las Rimas (1609) de Lope de Vega
- 6 Upwards to Helicon: Lope de Vega, the Laurel de Apolo, and Acts of Judgement
- 7 ‘Dulce es refugio’: El peregrino de Góngora se detiene
- 8 The Staging of Góngora's Three Funereal Sonnets for Margarita de Austria Estiria
- 9 Jealousy in María de Zayas's Intercalated Poetry: Lyric Illness and Narrative Cure
- 10 Hacia otra lectura del petrarquismo en Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
- Part 2 Poetry in Conversation
- 11 El conde de Salinas y Leonor Pimentel: cuando se juntan el amor y la poesía
- 12 Poesía popular en movimiento: los jeroglíficos ‘muy propios al intento y muy de su profesión’ en las celebraciones de la Valencia barroca
- 13 Responding to Góngora: María Rosal and the Clori Poems
- 14 Traveling in Place: Baroque Lyric Transports in Translation, or Flames that Bridge the Stream
- Works Cited
- Index
4 - Metaphors of Movement in Two Poems of Fray Luis de León
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 La poesía mutante del Siglo de Oro
- Part 1 Poetry in Creation
- 2 Moving in …Garcilaso de la Vega's ‘Dulces prendas por mi mal halladas’
- 3 The Movement of Thought and Feeling in the ‘Ode to Juan de Grial’
- 4 Metaphors of Movement in Two Poems of Fray Luis de León
- 5 El tiempo medido en versos: Camila Lucinda en las Rimas (1609) de Lope de Vega
- 6 Upwards to Helicon: Lope de Vega, the Laurel de Apolo, and Acts of Judgement
- 7 ‘Dulce es refugio’: El peregrino de Góngora se detiene
- 8 The Staging of Góngora's Three Funereal Sonnets for Margarita de Austria Estiria
- 9 Jealousy in María de Zayas's Intercalated Poetry: Lyric Illness and Narrative Cure
- 10 Hacia otra lectura del petrarquismo en Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
- Part 2 Poetry in Conversation
- 11 El conde de Salinas y Leonor Pimentel: cuando se juntan el amor y la poesía
- 12 Poesía popular en movimiento: los jeroglíficos ‘muy propios al intento y muy de su profesión’ en las celebraciones de la Valencia barroca
- 13 Responding to Góngora: María Rosal and the Clori Poems
- 14 Traveling in Place: Baroque Lyric Transports in Translation, or Flames that Bridge the Stream
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
At the end of his analysis of the ‘Vida retirada’ poem, Ricardo Senabre wrote: ‘Urge […] afrontar el estudio del sistema metafórico de fray Luis.’ He was arguing against the predominant biographical interpretation of the poem, in which its search for a life of peaceful contentment was read as the poet's desire to be free of the disputes and conflicts of Salamanca, and the famous garden ‘por mi mano plantado’ was identified with the Augustinian estate of La Flecha or another such retreat. He demonstrated persuasively that the classical, biblical and Patristic resonances of many of Fray Luis's metaphors, like the garden, the stormy sea and imprisonment, required a more literary reading. In turning to two of his most familiar ‘Odas’, the ‘Vida retirada’ and the ‘Noche serena’, I intend to take Senabre's plea seriously. To do so, in the first of these I will focus on the structural and thematic function of metaphors of movement drawn from the elements of air and water, and follow the trajectory of the second as it develops out of its initial contrast between two contrasting types of night vision, one upwards into the starry heavens, the other downwards to the sleeping earth. There is nothing especially original about the ideas Fray Luis expresses in these poems, drawn as they are from the common currency of neo-Stoical and neo-Platonic philosophy used by many Golden Age writers.
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- Spanish Golden Age Poetry in MotionThe Dynamics of Creation and Conversation, pp. 73 - 86Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014