Love and War: Male Friendship and the Performance of Masculinity in the Poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega (1501–1536)

Abstract

This article explores the performance of courtly masculinity in the poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega (1501–1536). It demonstrates how the Italianate lyric of sixteenth-century Spain allowed the poet to imagine the persona of the Renaissance courtier by experimenting with different models of male friendship. The three poems examined in this essay: an epistle, a sonnet, and an ode, respectively promote male relationships based on intellect and poetic skill, military achievement and solidarity, and homosociality and literary fame. Ultimately, Garcilaso’s works reveal the subtleties of how the new social identity of the masculine courtier and social relations were performed and mediated through the ‘new lyric’ in sixteenth-century Castilian letters.