Family Matters: Textual Memory and the Politics of Loss in Gómez Manrique’s Consolatorias

Abstract

his article examines Gomez Manrique’s consolation poems, ‘No pocas vezes’ (1456–1457), written for his sister, Juana Manrique, and the ‘Consolatoria’ (1480), written for his wife, Juana de Mendoza, as part of a corpus of works composed in response to the Manrique family’s political misfortunes. Although these two poems share thematic similarities to Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae, Gomez nevertheless breaks with the tradition of the classical consolation by composing ‘No pocas vezes’ and the ‘Consolatoria’ as textual monuments to his family’s virtuous lineage. Specifically, Gomez consoles his sister and wife by establishing their superiority to contemporary examples of Fortune’s victims, such as Alvaro de Luna, and interpreting their present suffering as a sign of the Manrique family’s future prosperity based on the example of Job. By presenting Juana Manrique and Juana de Mendoza as examples of the Manrique clan’s virtue, these two consolation poems also privilege Gomez’s perspective as author and architect of his family’s literary legacy.