A Sonnet from Carthage: Garcilaso de la Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe (review)

Abstract

HELGERSON, RICHARD. from Carthage: Garcilaso de la Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2007. xvii + 120 pages.In this slim but remarkable volume, Richard Helgerson, one of the most distinguished critics of early modern literature and culture writing today, explores the Italianate poetry of the Renaissance and early modern period through the lens provided by one of Garcilaso's less-studied sonnets, A Bo scan desde la Goleta. He also provides a bilingual anthology of the series of poems that Garcilaso wrote during the year and a half surrounding the military campaign in Tunis that provided the occasion for the Sonnet from Carthage. Helgerson does not argue that this poem was particularly influential, that it somehow helped shape the work of later poets working elsewhere. Rather, he argues that this sonnet uniquely encapsulates what he calls the of the new poetry: self-conscious poetic aspiration, self-immolation, place, and (xvi). The argument explores these five engagements in Garcilaso's sonnet, but also in the new poetry as a whole, as it was practiced in Italy, France, and England as well as in Spain.These engagements are not all of a kind. The engagement with imperial ambition, for example, has less to do with the dominant thematics of the new poetry than with its centrality to projects of cultural legitimization. Specifically, it refers to the task of producing a translatio studii from Latin to the vernacular meant to support a translatio imperii, the emergence of a nation-state or empire. Self-conscious poetic aspiration refers to the engagement of the new poets with the cultivation of genres and meters imported from Italian and classical models. Self-immolation has to do with the thematics of unrequited love so characteristic of the new poetry, and its emphasis on a tortured, introspective speaking subject. Place refers to the interest of the new poetry in the local, while friendship sums up the importance of male ho mo social bonds to the literary revolution carried out by the likes of Garcilaso and his friend Boscan.It should be apparent that these five engagements conflict among themselves, not to mention exhibit internal tensions each on its own. In fact, Helgerson argues, the tensions among and within these engagements are precisely what generate the new poetry's energy and enduring interest. Each of the chapters explores one of these engagements, taking as its point of departure one of the stanzas of Garcilaso's sonnet, or, in the case of the last chapter, the title customarily given to the poem. The argument then ranges away from Garcilaso's text and across various historical and biographical contexts, as well as a wealth of literary and historical intertexts, only to return home to Garcilaso in the closing paragraphs. Epic poetry, the iconography of triumphal processions, military history, biography, not to mention European lyric, classical and Renaissance epic, all make notable appearances along the way. The argument is geared to an audience of comparativists, so Hispanists will encounter some very familiar ideas, while others will be able to follow along even if they have not read Garcilaso.All the chapters are engaging, but some stand out from the rest. The one on the importance of homosocial bonds to the cultivation of the new poetry is particularly provocative. Helgerson captures the undeniable intensity of Garcilaso's affection for Boscan, particularly as it comes across in his Epistle to and in the Sonnet from Carthage itself. He does not hesitate, for example, to remind us that Garcilaso casts himself as the Dido of the Sonnet from Carthage, and that Boscan is therefore the Aeneas. I found myself wondering, however, whether Helgerson should not have gone even farther than he does, exploring not only the homosocial bonds that enable this poetry in Spain and elsewhere, but also the homoerotic implications of Garcilaso's language. …