In Praise of Inconstancy: The Odes to Lisi of Meléndez Valdés

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Notes

1. Antología de los poetas prerrománticos españoles, ed. Guillermo Carnero (Barcelona: Barrai, 1970).

2. D. Gareth Walters, ‘Iglesias as Plagiarist and Imitator of Quevedo: The Idilios and the Sonnets to Lisi’, Neophilologus, LXX (1986), 47–60.

3. See Antología de los poetas prerrománticos españoles, 31–38.

4. See Antología de los poetas prerrománticos españoles, 101,104,108. In his introduction to a selection of the poetry of Meléndez Valdés, J. H. R. Polt also characterizes as pre-Romantic traits commonly found in the poetry of the seventeenth century, for example an earthiness of language: ‘Algunas de las imágenes sensorias, que sirven sobre todo para expresar recuerdos, figuran realidades vulgares: “la ronca voz”, “entre sudor y polvo” ’. See Juan Meléndez Valdés, Poesías selectas: La lira de marfil, ed. J. H. R. Polt and Georges Demerson (Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1981), p. 47.

5. R. G. Havard, ‘The romances of Meléndez Valdés’, in Studies of the Spanish and Portuguese Ballad, ed. N. D. Shergold (London: Tamesis Books, 1972), 111–26; Joaquín Calvo Revilla, ‘El nuevo sentido del campo en la poesía de Meléndez’, Ínsula (October 1961), No. 179.

6. William E. Colford, Juan Meléndez Valdés. A Study in the Transition from Neo-Classicism to Romanticism in Spanish Poetry (New York: Hispanic Institute, 1942). Georges Demerson likewise has reservations about the presence of Romantic elements in Meléndez's poetry. He demonstrates how ideas in various poems considered by E. Allison Peers, among others, as Romantic are near-translations of Rousseau and Pascal. See Don Juan Meléndez Valdés et son temps (1754–1817) (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1961), 512–13.

7. Obras en verso, ed. J. H. R. Polt and G. Demerson (Oviedo: Cátedra Feijóo, Centro de Estudios del Siglo XVIII, 1981–83), 2 vols; I (1981), p. 201. Further references are to this edition and volume. Georges Demerson sees the influence of Rousseau's Julie in ‘El gabinete’ and believes the whole cycle may well be inspired by other works of the French writer (Don Juan Meléndez Valdés et son temps, 493–94).

8. See, for example, Meléndez Valdés, Poesías, ed. Pedro Salinas, (5th ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1973), p. 51n.

9. Salinas misleadingly omits substantial portions from the third and fourth odes in his edition without any indication of missing material. Poesías, 48–49.

10. See Nigel Glendinning, A Literary History of Spain: The Eighteenth Century (London: Ernest Benn, 1972), p. 75.

11. By the 1770s Góngora's shorter poems, such as the romances and the letrillas, were the ones most valued in the efforts to rehabilitate him. See Nigel Glendinning, ‘La fortuna de Góngora en el siglo XVIII’, RFE, XLIV (1961), 323–49, at p. 343.

12. A Literary History of Spain: The Eighteenth Century, p. 79.

13. ‘The romances of Meléndez Valdés’, p. 122.

14. These specific features are seen by Polt as representing ‘la vertiente subjetiva y sentimental del prerromanticismo’ in Meléndez's work, especially in A Jovino: el melancólico (see Poesías selectas, 46–47).