Garcilaso de la Vega and the Material Culture of Renaissance Europe

"Garcilaso de la Vega was highly attuned to the material presence of things, and in his Neapolitan poems he wrote on a variety of items such as tapestries, paintings, urns, statues, musical instruments, and weapons as powerful carriers of culture. Barnard offers an original and sophisticated view of the nexus between object, text, and memory where even the body becomes a material site of inquiry, as a space for the investigation of melancholia as much as a celebration of earthly pleasures. This is a magisterial take on Garcilaso's exploration of the psychology of the self, on his engagement with cultural heritage, and on the interplay between orality and writing, and a timely intervention that connects his worldview with some of our most pressing concerns and fascinations with objects." -- Enrique Garcia Santo-Tomas, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan "Mary E. Barnard's book is a lively and original study of the presence and interplay of artifacts in Garcilaso de la Vega's poetic texts. It is a welcome and timely contribution to our understanding of material culture in the Renaissance." -- Maria Cristina Quintero, Department of Spanish, Bryn Mawr College

Garcilaso de la Vega and the Material Culture of Renaissance Europe examines the role of cultural objects in the lyric poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega, the premier poet of sixteenth-century Spain.

Garcilaso de la Vega and the Material Culture of Renaissance Europe examines the role of cultural objects in the lyric poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega, the premier poet of sixteenth-century Spain. As a pioneer of the “new poetry” of Renaissance Europe, aligned with the court, empire, and modernity, Garcilaso was fully attuned to the collection and circulation of luxury artefacts and other worldly goods. In his poems, a variety of objects, including tapestries, paintings, statues, urns, mirrors, and relics participate in lyric acts of discovery and self-revelation, reveal memory as contingent and unstable, expose knowledge of the self as deceptive, and show how history intersects with the ideology of empire.

Mary E. Barnard’s study argues persuasively that the material culture of early sixteenth-century Europe embedded within Garcilaso’s poems offers a key to understanding the interplay between objects and texts that make those works such vibrant inventions.