There are few sonnets which portray Quevedo as a conventional courtly lover. It is rare to find an expression of his total satisfaction with the spiritual reward of human love, as in sonnet 490, ‘Puedo estar apartado, mas no ausente.’ There are sonnets which appear to express this experience, but these either take on a Neoplatonic configuration or go beyond the convention, employing love as a defense against solitude and the imminence of death's oblivion. Quevedo's aspiration to the courtly ideal is strained by his sensual desire. We shall now examine a group of sonnets which will demonstrate the poet's reaction to the courtly ethos, culminating with his frustration with this tormenting ideal.

QUEVEDO AND PETRARCH

The opinion that Quevedo was an uncritical imitator of Petrarch may have been influenced by the poet's first editor, J. González de Salas, who states in his introduction to the ‘Erato’ section of El Parnaso Español, 1648: ‘I confess that, taking note of the amorous discourse which can be inferred from the text of this section, which I reduced to its present form, I became convinced that our poet greatly desired that his love resemble Petrarch's. We are to see many parallels in these two similar experiences, which both expressed in their poetry.’