Love in the Poetry of Francisco de Aldana: Beyond Neoplatonism by Paul Joseph Lennon

Abstract

Reviewed by: Love in the Poetry of Francisco de Aldana: Beyond Neoplatonism by Paul Joseph Lennon Imogen Choi Love in the Poetry of Francisco de Aldana: Beyond Neoplatonism. By Paul Joseph Lennon. Woodbridge: Tamesis. 2019. xii+203 pp. £60. ISBN 978-1-85566-336-7. Paul Joseph Lennon's monograph is an important new study of the love lyric of the Spanish Neapolitan soldier poet Francisco de Aldana (c. 1540–1578). The central argument is that Aldana presents a 'hybrid approach to love', both physical and spiritual, based on a 'synthesis of competing elements' (p. 175), thus acknowledging both the complexities and imperfections of sexual relationships and their capacity to bring about fleeting moments of transcendence. The mainstay of the analysis is a series of illustrative close readings of selected poems, which are set in rigorous context. Neoplatonism and Petrarchism loom large, as might be expected, but there is also consideration of imitation of classical and contemporary models, notably Ovid, Lucretius, Garcilaso de la Vega, and Ariosto, erotic and burlesque poetry, intersections with the plastic arts, and philosophical influences such as Epicureanism. A brief Introduction gives a thumbnail sketch of Aldana's life and work, with an illuminating examination of the early modern reception of his poetry through Cosme de Aldana's posthumous editorial interventions. Chapter 1 ('The Complexities of Love') provides a synoptic overview of fifteenth-and sixteenth-century ideas about love and sexuality as shown through a series of Italian Neoplatonic and Petrarchan treatises, followed by their application to some of Aldana's lyric poetry. The discussion stresses the distortions inherent in the syncretic readings of both Plato and Petrarch, which resulted in conceptual strain, as well as the fact that the treatists' approach to sexuality varied. Bembo, Nifo, and Ebreo are singled out for their greater tolerance of physical as well as spiritual manifestations of intimacy between lovers. Throughout the book there are occasional misreadings of Aldana's religious language: here, for instance, the understanding of 'inteligencias' (p. 32) as meaning human souls rather than angels (Aquinas's 'intellectual creatures'), or 'vestir hábito estrecho de religión' as referring to a desire for Neoplatonic union with the beloved rather than entering a religious order (pp. 39–41). Chapter 2 ('The Temerity to Love') assesses in detail a persuasion poem addressed to the lyric voice's beloved, 'Pues tan piadosa luz', via several shorter poems. The central moment is the envisaged union of the two lovers through the metaphor of a storm-tossed ship, a rare depiction of the power of reciprocal love. Chapter 3 ('The Nature of Love') is a masterful analysis of four of Aldana's 'bucolic' dialogue sonnets, two of which, the Damón-Galatea pairing, are among his best-known pieces. Taken together, the poems showcase the frustrations and pleasures of a non-idealized love, with an unusually proactive female persona. Chapter 4 ('(De)Mythologising Love') discusses two varieties of mythological poems: 'Medoro y Angélica', which expands on the consummation of the two characters' marriage in the Orlando furioso, and a sonnet and incomplete poem in octaves on the affair of Venus and Mars. The contextual preamble is perhaps overly [End Page 305] rigid in suggesting that Graeco-Roman mythology was primarily approached in an 'overtly moral' allegorical vein in this period (p. 125), but the real highlight is the close reading of the 'Angélica'. The poem is experimental both in its use of voyeurism, which goes beyond the bounds of decorum in its description of the female body while preserving a 'faux-Petrarchan appearance' (p. 138), and in its indirect portrayal of female sexual awakening. The discussion of Venus and Mars might have benefited from a consideration of Aldana's dialogue with epic and lyric beyond Ovid (the lexis seems heavily inflected with Garcilaso and Ercilla), but is another cogent exploration of the poems' gendered and intertextual dimensions. Finally, a conclusion or 'Coda' analyses a gloss of Garcilaso's 'Pasando el mar Leandro el animoso' to show how Aldana's reinvention of the myth acts as a final 'testament to the intrepid nature of human love' (p. 174). This book will be indispensable to future scholars of...