Principe de los Poetas Castellanos

A rare edition of the secular poetry of courtier and soldier-poet Garcilaso de la Vega (1501?-1536). This edition contains 37 of de la Vega’s sonnets, followed by 5 canciones, 2 elegies, the ‘epistola a Boscan,’ 3 eclogues, letras castellanas (including one in prose), a poem in Latin addressed to Ferdinando de Acuna, and an index of poetry.  

Born in Toledo, Garcilaso de la Vega entered the court of Charles V at a young age, and spent much of his life as a soldier on the Holy Roman Emperor’s campaigns in various theatres across Europe. His poetic legacy is significant; for generations he represented the ideal courtly poet-soldier (resembling Philip Sidney, in England) and was instrumental in introducing Italian literary forms and metres into Spanish literature, from the sonnet to ottava rima (octavas reales). His secular verses were hugely popular; some of these indeed were bowdlerized by Castilian poet and writer, Sebastián de Córdoba (?1545-?1604).

De la Vega’s poems first appeared in print posthumously, in 1543, with those of Juan Boscàn Almugaver (1487? -1542?) (Las obras de Boscán y algunas de Garcilasso de la Vega repartidas en quatro libros), and continued to be so, in various editions from then on. The 1543 Barcelona and 1544 Medina del Campo editions were in 4to; thereafter most of the editions were in 12mo format, as here. The first separate edition of his work would seem to be that published in Madrid in 1570, followed by a 12mo of 1581 published in Salamanca by Lucas Junta (Giunta). This was reprinted in Madrid in 1600, in Naples in 1604, and by Juan de la Cuesta in Madrid in 1612. 

The editor of this critical edition was Tomás Tamayo de Vargas (ca. 1589- ca. 1641) a noted man of letters, also born in Toledo. His life of Garcilaso makes frequent mention of later Spanish poets who honoured de la Vega’s memory, and his learned commentary in the second part is replete with parallels from Roman poets (Ovid, Horace, Valerius Flaccus, Plautus and others) and other classical sources. There are also references to contemporary scholars and their work (including Casaubon and Rhodoman) alongside the inclusion of contemporary poets. Present here are the verses of Portuguese Camoens and Lobo; the diplomat, poet and collector Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503-75) from Spain; and Italian poets and writers Petrarch, Bembo, Tasso and Trissino. Also present are ’las Rimas Christianas de Madama Gabriela’ (f.81), likely Gabrielle de Coignard of Toulouse (d. 1594).

A few leaves with minor marginal damp-stains, small tear in f. 57.

PALAU 354699. See A. Gallego Morell, Garcilaso de Vega y sus comentaristas: obras completes del poeta acompanadas de los textos integros de los comentarios… (Madrid, 1972) and other publications by the same.

[OCLC: US: UC Berkeley, Newberry, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Thomas Fisher, UCLA. UK: Birmingham]..