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| biography |
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biography
| name: |
Garcilaso de la Vega
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pronunciation:
[gah(r)thilasoh th
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (c.1501–36)
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| biography:
| Poet, born in Toledo, C Spain. Born into a noble family, he entered the court of Carlos V in 1502 and spent most of his life in service to the king. He took part in an unsuccessful expedition to relieve Rhodes (1522) and the Tunis campaign (1535). In 1525 he married Elena de Zúñiga, but in the following year fell in love with a Portuguese lady, Isabel Freyre, to whom he addressed his greatest love poems. For his unauthorized attendance at the marriage of one of Carlos V's nephews he was banished in 1532, first briefly to Schut, an island in the Danube, then to Naples, where he met Tasso, Luigi Tansillo, and Juan de Valdés. In 1536 he was fatally injured leading an attack on the fort of Le Muy while serving Carlos V in the latter's invasion of France. Considered a major poet, his work is important for introducing the so-called ‘Italian’ style into Spain, using in particular the courtly conventions enhanced by Petrarch. Extant compositions by Garcilaso comprise two elegías in tercets (one addressed to his friend Boscà); an epistle to Boscà in free verse; five canciones; some verse in traditional metres; some in Latin; 38 sonnets and three eclogues, one in octavas reales, and the others in varied metres. For his own and succeeding generations Garcilaso has represented the Renaissance ideal of the courtly poet-soldier: a man of arms and learning, quick to love yet wise enough to resign himself to love's loss. |
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