| Summary: | Poet fray Luis de León and music theorist Francisco de Salinas were both involved in a thorough reflexion on lyrical poetry, aiming to redirect the almost magical powers that were attributed to Classical poetry towards christianity. With that aim in mind, fray Luis systematized the use of certain formal devices he found in Garcilaso de la Vega’s works, such as the choice of the Horatian lira and the use of rhythmical dissonances. These were widely used by all Renaissance poets, following Petrarch’s example, but are unrecognized because they were usually not included in poetic treatises. They are defined, however, in Francisco de Salinas’s De musica libri septem, whose main source for the treatment of rhythm is Augustine’s De musica. The Church Father is thus the earliest authority for a valuable expressive device, allowing fray Luis to make systematic use of such an ornament in his Christian moral poems without introducing any contradiction between form and meaning, and thereby to compose a Christian Horace.
|
|---|